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EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Department of Political and Social Sciences
Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics:
Understanding Power and Governance in the Second Gulf War
Stefano Guzzini
Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining
the Degree of Doctor of the European University Institute
Department of Political and Social Sciences
Examining Jury
Prof. David Baldwin (Columbia University, New York)
Prof. Pierre Hassner (CERI, IEP, Paris)
Prof. Steven Lukes (EUI, co-supervisor)
Prof. Susan Strange (University of Warwick, external professor EUI, supervisor)
Ole Wæver (Center for Conflict and Peace Research and University Copenhagen)
Florence
October 1994
EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Department of Political and Social Sciences
Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics:
Understanding Power and Governance in the Second Gulf War
Stefano Guzzini
Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining
the Degree of Doctor of the European University Institute
Department of Political and Social Sciences
Examining Jury
Prof. David Baldwin (Columbia University, New York)
Prof. Pierre Hassner (CERI, IEP, Paris)
Prof. Steven Lukes (EUI, co-supervisor)
Prof. Susan Strange (University of Warwick, external professor EUI, supervisor)
Ole Wæver (Center for Conflict and Peace Research and University Copenhagen)
Florence
October 1994
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Acknowledgements
This work would have been inconceivable without the support of the European University
Institute, both for the material and working conditions, and for its intellectually
stimulating, albeit luckily not too competitive human environment. Let me first thank all
those at the EUI who made this research possible. I would also like to thank Iver B.
Neumann and Marc Smyrl for having tried to improve my language.
Furthermore, I have much profited from seminar interventions by or discussions with
Ian Carter, Thomas Christiansen, Johan Jeroen De Deken, Helmut Dubiel, Maurice
Glasman, Daniela Gobetti, Rainer Grundmann, Markus Jachtenfuchs, Knud-Erik
Jørgensen, Philippe Marlière, Jean-Pierre Malrieu, Véronique Muñoz-Dardé, Erik Ringmar,
Stefan Rossbach, Emilio Santoro, Davide Sparti, Michael Suhr, Yves Sintomer, and Arpád
Szakolcsai. I would especially like to thank the seminars and private discussions with
Gunther Teubner and Alessandro Pizzorno who have provided a continuing challenge and
encouragement to develop my theoretical thoughts.
The present study developed over a long time. For comments on my “June Paper”,
I am particularly thankful to Robert Gilpin, Peter Morriss, Ronen Palan, and Roger Tooze.
Chapter 2 is an outgrowth of a manuscript on the state of the art in IR/IPE, that, in turn,
synthesised several chapters from a Working Paper entitled “The Continuing Story of a
Death Foretold: Realism in International Relations/International Political Economy” (SPS
92/20). It was improved by suggestions from Chris Hill, Mark Hoffman, Jef Huysmans,
Reinhard Meyers, Gunther Teubner, Ronen Palan, and Rob Walker.
A previous version of chapter 6 has been published in International Organization, vol.
47, no. 3 (Summer 1993). For very helpful suggestions on drafts and on the final version
of the article, I am indebted to David Baldwin, Alan Cafruny, Stewart Clegg, James S.
Coleman, Robert Cox, Stephen Gill, Pierre Hassner, John MacLean, Reinhard Meyers,
Andrew Moravcsik, Alessandro Pizzorno, John Odell and two anonymous reviewers.
Previous drafts on Part IV and V of the thesis have been commented by Pierre
Hassner, Chris Hill, Iver B. Neumann, and Ghassan Salamé. My very special gratitude
goes to Heikki Patomäki who thoroughly commented this and several other of my
writings, pointing to shortcomings, partly still unresolved.
Finally, I want to thank those who have read and commented all drafts and without
whom the present thesis would have been unthinkable. Ole Wæver incessantly encouraged
me to develop my thoughts and suggested several paths for this purpose. Over the years
in Florence, Steven Lukes’ methodological and substantial hints and criticisms made this
very enterprise of a conceptual analysis of power in IR/IPE possible. Susan Strange often
played not only the “midwife”, as she calls it, but also the devil’s advocate so as to force
me to clearer thought and expression. In countless discussions, Anna Leander influenced
my thinking, and helped me to resolve several deadlocks during the writing.
Although I do not think to have matched all the criticisms, I did my best to honour
them. The thesis is dedicated to Anna.
Florence, October 1994
Stefano Guzzini
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Table of Contents
Part I. Introduction
Chapter 1. Puzzles of a Power Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1. Making sense of power puzzles: origins and limits of a conceptual analysis (3)
2. A historical moment foregone? The Second Gulf War and the trasformismo of
the “New World Order” (6)
3. The outline of the argument (8)
Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
Chapter 2. International Theory after the Inter-Paradigm Debate . . . . . . . . .
1. “Colour it Kuhn” (16)
2. Searching borders (22)
3. Theoretical rapprochements as the context of new power concepts (30)
4. Power Analysis: increased agency potential and diffusion of rule (34)
15
Chapter 3. Understanding the concept of power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Assumptions of a conceptual analysis (35)
2. The ambiguity of “power” (38)
3. Purposes of power (39)
4. Power as an “essentially contested” concept? (45)
5. Conclusion: Explanatory perspectivism (53)
35
Part III. Realist Power Analysis and Its Critics
Chapter 4. The Inevitable “Struggle for Power” in Realist Explanations . . . .
1. The Balance of Power as Theory (64)
2. Purposes and limits of power in the “Second debate” (72)
3. Conclusion: The aims and limits of “power” in Realist explanations (80)
63
Chapter 5. Relational Power and Causal Analysis in Neorealism . . . . . . . . . .
1. The economistic approach to power in IR revisited (83)
2. David Baldwin’s concept and assessment of power (86)
3. The assessment of power under different models of the international system
(92)
4. Neorealist Power Analysis (98)
82
Chapter 6. Structural Power: The Limits of Neorealist Power Analysis . . . . . 100
1. Beyond Neorealism? Meanings of structural power (101)
2. A power analysis with a dyad of concepts (115)
3. Conclusion: Purposes and meanings of power and governance (123)
V
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Chapter 7. Neorealist Power Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. The “logic” of power: “collateral pressure” and “osmosis” (129)
2. Relational “securities” (131)
3. Behavioural assumptions (132)
4. Conclusion: Questions of a Neorealist Power-Analysis (136)
129
Chapter 8. Origins of the conflict: Power shifts in the Middle Eastern security
complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
1. A regional hegemonic war in a “unipolar moment” (141)
2. Beyond military security: political and financial destabilisation (154)
3. Conclusion: The Gulf in search of an equilibrium (164)
Chapter 9. The dynamics of the conflict: overcoming the “Vietnam
Syndrome” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. The multilateralisation of the conflict (167)
2. Influencing the public opinion (182)
3. From the “Rapid Deployment Force” to “Desert Storm” (189)
4. Conclusion: The Gulf conflict — unnecessary and inevitable (193)
Chapter 10. “War and Change” in the Middle Eastern Security Complex . .
1. A new kind of war for a new kind of security? (195)
2. Installing a balance of wealth and legitimacy? (202)
3. A new regional balance of power (207)
4. A precedent for conflict management in the “new world order”? (223)
5. Conclusion: The inconclusive victory (230)
166
195
Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
Chapter 11. Assumptions of an analysis of governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Constructivism (238)
2. Intersubjective practices as unit of analysis (240)
3. The analysis of governance (245)
237
Chapter 12. The clash of legitimation processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
1. The Legitimacy Problem in Changing Arab Societies: Iraq’s fuite en avant
reconsidered (254)
2. The tacit power of the strong: effects of superpower practices (264)
3. Conclusion: Social contracts, whether stabilised abroad or not (277)
Chapter 13. Governance through collective memory: just war tales and the
World War II script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
1. Symbolic Power or the ritualised mobilisation of collective memory (279)
2. The metaphorical construction of legitimate action (289)
VI
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
3. Who/what “kicked” the Vietnam syndrome?, or: the Second Gulf War script
as Vietnam’s translation into World War II (292)
4. Conclusion: A ritualised return to 1945 to overcome the … Arab Syndrome? (302)
Chapter 14. Ritualised understanding: Realist puzzle-solving . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
1. The silent construction of puzzles: overrationalised power translations (305)
2. The open construction of the opponent as ritualised legitimation (321)
3. Conclusion: Constructing the “lessons of...” debate: Kuwait against Berlin
(330)
Part VI. Conclusion
Chapter 15. Power Analysis: From a guide to a critique of Power Politics . .
1. Combining power and governance (336)
2. The Purposes of Power Analysis revisisted: attributing moral blame and
defining political options (342)
3. The limits of power (347)
335
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
VII
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Part I
Introduction
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Table of Contents for Part I
Chapter 1. Puzzles of a Power Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Making sense of power puzzles: origins (and limits) of a conceptual analysis
2. A historical moment foregone? The Second Gulf War and the trasformismo of
the “New World Order” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. The outline of the argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
3
6
8
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
1
Puzzles of a Power Analysis
1. Making sense of power puzzles: origins (and limits) of a conceptual
analysis
Every sizable intellectual enterprise starts with one or more basic puzzles. My first puzzle
was the ubiquity of power in international explanations. It was a central concept for
understanding and, indeed, for characterising international politics; and yet, everyone used
it differently. Despite its inconsistency, however, much of the International Relations (IR)
literature seemed to assume a consensus about its meaning and its explanatory role. There
was common agreement that power is “important” or “significant” — but just what exactly
this importance had to be spelled out was left to the individual writer.
Out of this general questioning grew the more concrete puzzle that underlies this
study. Realism reserves a central place to power in its explanations. It refers either to the
basic drive behind human behaviour, the central means, and for some also the intermediate
aim of all foreign policy. Since the 1970s, however, power has increasingly been used as
a central concept for the critique of Realism. The first and easy explanation was, of
course, that this refers just to distinct meanings of power. More recent conceptualisations
challenged established meanings. If power means different things for different people, then
it might also be used as both a defence and a critique of Realism. The situation turned out
less simple, and more interesting, than that.
As chapter 2 will try to argue, I think that since the beginning of the 1970s, Realism
lost its paradigmatic position in International Relations (IR) without being replaced by
another dominant paradigm. Among the attempts to redefine the core of the discipline (and
enlarge its borders) were approaches gathered under the label “Intenrational Political
Economy” (IPE). This new field included neomarxist approaches and dependency theories,
but also the work of international economists concerned with the political regulation of
international economic relations even more urgently needed after the demise of the
3
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
4
Part I. Introduction
Bretton-Woods regime.1 Within this pool of writers were also many who, until then, were
considered to be regular IR scholars, more or less influenced by Realism. One of the
hypotheses I want to develop in the following chapters, is that there has been a rapprochement between those “Classical” IR writers and some more radical IPE. This rapprochement has been most fruitful for the discussion of power in the discipline. Hence some of
the “new” concepts of power, often called structural power, are to be seen as attempts by
some Realists themselves to update their central explanatory variable.
By the start of the “Second Cold War”2, however, the discipline returned to more
traditional waters. Neorealism and the debates around it resurrected a central place for
power and Realism by substituting for the more traditional methodology an explicit import
of economic modelling. Here the “market” does not enter as a central explanatory variable,
as in IPE, but as the methodological analogy upon which a more scientific Realist theory
could be based. It is at this point, that poststructuralist approaches used concepts of power
to criticise this disciplinary move toward closure.
Hence, I think one can make sense of the second puzzle by stating that (1) the
development of IPE at the end of the Realist predominance, and (2) the poststructuralist
critique of the Neorealist turn provide the background for understanding the turn of
“power” from a guide to a critique of Realism. The present thesis tries to explore the
possibilities of drawing these two strands together. It will be argued that it is possible to
make sense of the different new concepts of power. They can be understood as indirect
institutional power, nonintentional power, and impersonal power. Since their metatheoretical underpinnings diverge, one cannot reduce all the meanings to one concept. It
is, however, possible to include their insights into a coherent power analysis around two
(necessary) concepts, power and governance.
For carrying out this conceptual analysis, the thesis relies on what has been termed
the “methodological turn” in IR.3 In other words, the following analysis will be referring
to different levels: the meta-theoretical, the theoretical (explanatory), and the conceptual.
It assumes that concepts derive their exact meaning from the theories in which they are
embedded. They can have compatible meanings if they share a common meta-theoretical
framework, as for instance different methodological individualist and/or rational choice
do. Therefore, the clarification of the meanings of the concept of power starts with their
actual uses, and will try to achieve coherence with the respective underlying metatheoretical framework.
Hence, to apply this particular power analysis to an empirical case, means to embed
it into explanatory theories. The way power analysis is conducted here, provides
1
For convenience, one could even say that IPE’s birthday was the US administration’s decision to stop
convertibility and finally to put Bretton Woods to the archives.
2
This is Fred Halliday’s suitable description, see Fred Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War
(London: Verso, 1983).
3
Richard Little, “International Relations and the Methodological Turn”, Political Studies, vol. XXXIX,
no. 3 (September 1991), pp. 463-478.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Puzzles of a Power Analysis
5
conceptual means for understanding different meanings of power; it cannot, however,
overcome metatheoretical divides underlying different theories. By referring to actual
theories, or often to frameworks of analysis, the present thesis tries to show that IR/IPE,
if it wants to keep the insights of these power approaches, would be best served if it
extended its frameworks into historical sociology and poststructuralist theory.4 Indeed, the
empirical part of the thesis seeks to show that the epistemological turn of the 1980s might
be fruitfully followed by an explicitly interpretivist sociological turn in the 1990s.5
In other words, the thesis argues that taking power seriously implies leaving the
theoretical and meta-theoretical frameworks of Neorealism. It is meant to invite Realist
writers to reconsider the Neorealist turn of their theory. It invites “reflectivists” of all
kinds to think about the link between their epistemological and conceptual discussions and
an intersubjective analysis of those empirical events which the discipline is used to study,
as, for instance, war.
This particular aim and purpose, to provide a ground on which interpretive theories
could debate, means, however, that some of the major recent theoretical discussions are
barely touched. I chose the epistemological ground for my discussion. This neither means
that it is the only important, or even less, that it is the unique possibility for interpretivist
theories to meet. The other prominent candidate is political theory or philosophy, often
called normative theory or ethics within IR/IPE. The main reason for this focus is that,
compared with the rapprochement that is attempted in the following chapters, normative
discussions are already well developed in IR/IPE, and were successfully applied to the
Second Gulf War.6 Although I will refer to and partly rely on this literature, it is always
done with the focus on my own approach. I hope that the following discussions are not
read as an exclusion of normative concerns.
A final limit of the approach is that a conceptual analysis, as conceived here, does not
provide the very thing many scholars were hunting after: a new core for the discipline.
Consequently, it cannot claim to provide the most privileged place for the study of IR/IPE.
Similarly, a conceptual analysis is no substitute for an explanatory theory, although it
should be helpful in discussing the pieces of such theories. Power is no shortcut for such
a theory.
4
My understanding of poststructuralism will be introduced in Part II and in particular in Part V.
For an argument to sold out the culturalist turn in IR/IPE on the grounds of historical sociology (and
with reference to poststructuralist theory), see Anna Leander, “Bertrand Badie: Cultteral Diversity Changing
International Relations?” (Florence: European University Institute, Working Paper SPS 94/6), forthcoming in
Iver B. Neumann and Ole Wæver, Masters in the Making: International Theorists Reassessed (London:Routledge).
6
For the Second Gulf War, see for instance David Campbell, Politics Without Principle: Sovereignty,
Ethics and the Narratives of the Gulf War (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993).
5
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
6
Part I. Introduction
2. A historical moment foregone? The Second Gulf War and the trasformismo of the “New World Order”
A final puzzle is a question which emerged at the end of the analysis of governance
through the Second Gulf War. Is it possible that the foreign policy routines and academic
analytical dispositions which were mobilised during the Second Gulf War reduced the
meaning and the effect of the end of the Cold War? This is, of course, a counterfactual
statement, but that is common currency in power statements.
The Cold War ended with a completely unexpected policy initiative in Moscow.
Soviet “New Thinking” decided to give up that for which generations of Soviet citizens,
willingly or not, have been struggling, namely a glacis in Eastern Europe. That politicians
and academics were caught mainly unprepared should have been expected. This happens
in all social sciences. Yet there were also specific aggravating circumstances. Realism is
a theory which has a cyclical view of history: the past returns in new disguises. This
meant that changes are generally underplayed, because they are believed not to
fundamentally affect the basic features of international policy. The end of the Cold War
was therefore quickly explained as the “outpowering” of one of the superpower contenders
by another. Briefly, the Western military and political escalation was too much to stomach
for the Soviets.
This interpretation has been criticised by many Sovietologists. High military and
economic competition was nothing new in Soviet history. In the past, it produced periods
of higher domestic repression. Indeed, the Second Cold War was first answered with an
attempt to match the West. There was not much discussion about reform before 1985-86.
The final decision to go for glasnost and perestroika came, following MccGwire, in
January 1987. It was a largely autonomous decision, taken when the US budget deficit had
eventually stopped the US arms race (which the Soviets knew).7 It might be that repression was not possible with the new interlocking international political economy, i.e. that
globalisation had reached and overcome the Soviet state. Yet, here we are already outside
the Realist approach, because it is not power politics, but the globalisation of markets
which is the explanatory factor. Still, one would need to show that the Soviet Union could
not come back to a more autarchic policy. After all, it had a tradition of being a brutal
totalitarian regime.8
Why did Gorbachev not try to massacre opposition in the USSR, as did the Chinese
on Tienanmen Square? Several studies have tried to show that Soviet “New Thinking” has
taken several insights from peace research (and from the CSCE process) rather more
seriously than official Westerners policies.9 Realists will say that this the usual make-up
7
This thesis can be found in Michael MccGwire, Perestroika and Soviet National Security (Washington:
The Brookings Institution, 1991).
8
This was another of the easily available goods on the social science market: totalitarian regimes have
never changed. It is a one way street (except if war destroys them).
9
For this point, see for instance the preface to the second edition of Allan Lynch, The Soviet study of
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Puzzles of a Power Analysis
7
for not admitting the humiliation of having been overpowered. Maybe. It seems, though,
that the Soviets were quite convinced about their new strategy and their regained
diplomatic initiative.
Be that as it may, there were people who argued already at the time, that this was a
historical moment for institutionalisation of new foreign policy procedures and power
management. Now, buried under the ruins of the war in former Yugoslavia, the CSCE was
considered in 1989-1992 a possible candidate for the management of international disputes
in Europe. This euphoria might have been particularly strong in Germany. There are also
good reasons for this. German observers were already trained to consider such possible
changes.
Hans-Dietrich Genscher was already Foreign Minister when the Helsinki accord was
signed, when détente was discarded, and when the very heated Cold War debates accompanied the stationing of Pershing and Cruise Missiles in Europe. Yet, he could arrange
with his Soviet counterpart, in what in diplomatic time-frames were just some “historical
minutes” the 2 plus 2 agreement, that is, German unification — within NATO. For those
who had experienced the intra-German deadlocks of the last decades that was not only
unexpected, but it showed that politically prepared decision-makers could make a
difference. It showed that the self-referential system of enemy images could be interrupted.
At that time, Genscher relaunched a topic that German détente politicians had already used
at the beginning of their Ostpolitik: “Europainnenpolitik” (European domestic politics).
Former Chancellor Willy Brandt referred to this concept and also to “World domestic
politics” during his speech at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony. By these, admittedly
vague, concepts, is meant the establishment of a security system in Europe where borders
play a much lesser role. The increasing interlocking of political and social systems implies
that “politics” had to be thought, and bit by bit also conducted, in more transnational
terms.10
When Genscher used these concepts, he thought about Yugoslavia. The Paris Charter
of the CSCE was finished, a permanent secretariat of the CSCE established, and a new
rule for votes within the CSCE was accepted. In this rule, it was possible to decide about
CSCE interventions within the member states, without there being a veto-right of the
concerned countries. Consequently, one scholar had been pushing for taking this historical
moment seriously, because it could be used to institutionalise foreign policy practices
which made the security system much better working in Europe. But against an inter-
international relations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
10
For a reference to Brandt’s concepts during détente, see Pierre Hassner, Europe in the Age of
Negotiation. The Washington Papers No. 8 (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972). For the present discussion, see Dieter
Senghaas, “Weltinnenpolitik—Ansätze für ein Konzept”, Europa-Archiv, vol. 47, no. 22 (25 November 1992),
pp. 643-652.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
8
Part I. Introduction
national “autism” of established practices, which the Second Gulf War evoked, this change
did not happen.11
Hence, the fundamental claim that derived from the study of governance through the
Second Gulf War is that the particular understanding and handling of the Second Gulf
War might have contributed to forgetting the more revolutionary implications of the end
of the Cold War. There was an important change. This change was the result of contrived
and conscious policies. Politics was something else than the adaptation to the never ending
security dilemma.
A power analysis around a pair of concepts can indicate how the challenged Realist
world was reconstructed through the Second Gulf War. Its critique of this reconstruction
is a critique of power politics in the double sense. On the one hand, it questions the power
effects of (Realist) power analysis itself which returns to well-established schemes:
Munich, or Vietnam. On the other hand, the working of those dispositions is “politicised”
through their integration into power analysis. Power is a concept that is generally used to
define what counts as a political issue, what it is “possible” to change. Bringing these
“impersonal” effects explicitly into the analysis of power leads to a view of events very
different from that of individualist or rational choice approaches — both of which are led
to interpret keyaspects of the situation as random or fortuitous. To claim that something
is a phenomenon of power or luck, influences future political behaviour about it. As such,
the present power analysis, as conducted through the Second Gulf War, has moved from
being a guide to a critique of Power Politics.12
Hence the “New World Order” proclaimed by the Bush administration was more
important than just purely make-up, yet not because it really meant a new world order.
Under its disguise, established ways of seeing and acting in international politics have
become legitimated again. It is trasformismo in the real sense. It is an attempt to sell old
for new and to change the outlook in order to preserve the old. But, in opposition to the
old Realist idea of an endlessly circular history, it also a counterfactual: it could have been
otherwise. It is a contrived result of the not necessarily intentional mobilisation of existing
dispositions, not a natural law of international politics.
11
Dieter Senghaas had introduced the concept of “autism” in international affairs. It will be discussed in
Part V. For his invitation to profit from the dynamics of the time, see Dieter Senghaas, Friedensprojekt
Europa (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1992).
12
There is now an emerging literature on the impact of the end of the Cold War on international theory.
Several writers have come to similar conclusions, namely that Realist policy and theory is not only insufficient, but in fact a hindrance to the understanding and realisation of change in international affairs. With
regard to this debate, the present study can provide a particular frameowrk of analysis to understand the
interplay between Realism and world affairs, and an empirical case, the Second Gulf War, whose effect has
been to routinise the particular historical moment of 1989. See for the debate all the contributions to a
symposium on the topic, published in a special issue of International Organization, vol. 48, no. 2 (Spring
1994), in particular, Roy Koslowski and Friedrich V. Kratochwil, “Understanding Change in international
politics: the Soviet empire’s demise and the international system”, pp. 215-247; and Richard Ned Lebow, “The
long peace, the end of the cold war, and the failure of realism”, pp. 249-277.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Puzzles of a Power Analysis
9
3. The outline of the argument
The purely theoretical Part II of the thesis starts with the presentation of the assumptions
of this conceptual analysis in an overview of the historical and disciplinary background
within which the present power debate in IR/IPE developed (chapter 2). Both the
perception of more diffused forms of power in international politics and the disciplinary
closures of Neorealism provoked the renewed concern with the concept of power. Chapter
3 will then introduce the theoretical assumptions of this conceptual analysis of power. It
is argued that the meta-theory and theory-dependence of power implies that phenomena
described by power cannot be coherently subsumed under one general concept. An
analysis of power which tries to show its role in explanations must therefore rely on a
form of “explanatory perspectivism”.
Part III introduces the power debate in IR/IPE. After a discussion of the Classical
Realist’s concept of power (chapter 4), the Neorealist concept of power will be introduced
(chapter 5) and criticised (chapter 6). It will be shown that Neorealism has, in fact, the
most limited concept of power. Concepts of “structural power” include indirect institutional power, nonintentional power and impersonal power. Whereas the first one is part of the
Neorealist research programme, the others cannot be coherently accounted for within it,
at least as part of the concept of power. They appear as random variables, or just simply
as “luck”. Chapter 6 proposes also a way of coherently integrating this different aspects
of power. The solution consists of a power analysis, that necessarily includes two
concepts, agent power and impersonal governance.
Part IV and V illustrate the different meanings of power with the case of the Second
Gulf War. The Neorealist power account (Part IV) is embedded in a Neorealist security
analysis. The analysis of governance relies on frameworks of epistemology, interpretivist
sociology and political economy. These two parts aim at showing that although one can
construct a detailed, and I think also partly fruitful, Neorealist security analysis, it cannot
claim to include all power phenomena. Since power is used to define the borders of
political issues, this implies not only that the analysis will leave out realms of action in
the understanding of the conflict, but that this very understanding itself forecloses potential
political actions in world affairs. The proposed power analysis with a pair of concepts
allows for such a reflexive turn which questions these theoretical power effects. It is in
this context, that in particular the analysis of governance questions the feedback effect of
the understanding of the Second Gulf War (both by intervening and observing agents) on
the effects of the end of the Cold War.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
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Part II
A conceptual analysis of
power during the crisis of
Realism
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
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Table of Contents for Part II
Introduction to Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13
Chapter 2. International Theory after the Inter-Paradigm Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. “Colour it Kuhn” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1. The concept of paradigm (16); 1.2. An obsession with triads (17)
2. Searching borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. The global net (23); 2.2. Closure and Opening of the subject-matter (25); 2.3.
The meta-theoretical debate (25); 2.4. International Theory at the beginning of the
1990s (26)
3. Theoretical rapprochements as the context of new power concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1. Political theory beyond the anarchy/sovereignty divide (31); 3.2. Historicised IPE
around the state-society nexus (32)
4. Power Analysis: increased agency potential and diffusion of rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
16
Chapter 3. Understanding the concept of power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Assumptions of a conceptual analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. The ambiguity of “power” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. Purposes of power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1. Peter Morriss’ three contexts (39); 3.2. Power as an explanatory concept? (40)
4. Power as an “essentially contested” concept? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1. Value-dependence of “power” (45); 4.2. Power and moral responsibility (46); 4.3.
Power and theory-dependence of facts (49)
5. Conclusion: Explanatory perspectivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
35
35
38
39
22
30
34
45
53
Conclusion to Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
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Introduction to Part II
This analysis proposes a conceptual analysis of power in the context of a discipline,
International Relations (IR), in crisis. It attempts to show that the present power debate
did not originate in the 1980s, but started at the end of the 1960s, when Realism was no
longer able to keep its position as the central legitimate research programme. The present
power debate in IR can be put in the context of the widening agenda of IR since the
period of detente, the decline of US supremacy after Vietnam, and the break-up of Bretton
Woods. Peace research’s question of alternative foreign and strategic policies started to
include issues like famine or cultural/economic development and foreign policy themes
like “confidence-building measures”. The definition of “international politics” expanded,
including “high” and “low” politics. Within the discipline of International Relations, this
was signalled by the attempts to broaden the very subject-matter’s name: from “International Politics”, often conceived as an outgrowth of International Law or Diplomatic
History, via “International Relations” and “World Politics”, to “International Political
Economy”.
Power and “politics” have a strong mutual defining link in Realist theory, so much
so as to be often used together as a single concept. For Realists, politics is about the individual (national) pursuit of power and its collective management. Or, expressed the other
way round: outcomes in international politics are decided by power differentials and their
distribution. Broadening the research agenda implied a critique of this approach or, at
least, of its limits. In this critique, politics is done by other actors than states. States, in
turn, have an international policy which in the time of “embedded liberalism”
encompasses more than strictly military or diplomatic security. This implies new forms
of collective management of international politics, as through regimes for instance. Present
international affairs have known the increased role of politics and power, more widely
conceived.
Meanwhile, the transnationalisation of politics undermines the very control capacities
of states and other international actors. A first look at the power differentials no longer
explains the outcomes. It seems, as if “structural” factors are increasingly shaping and
moving world events. The research community reacted particularly to the realisation that
the US, and more generally the West, could no longer conduct foreign policy unilaterally,
and that even its domestic policies were increasingly affected from abroad.
It is this context of both an expansion of “politics” as a potential field of action, and
a perceived contraction of “politics” as real room of manoeuvre that has triggered the
various new power research programmes. These concentrate both on the new direct and
indirect ways to control agendas and regimes and on the increasingly perceived impersonal
rule of the international scene.
Therefore, Part I will show how the call for new power concepts can be seen in
realtionship with the present identity crisis of IR/IPE. For this purpose, we need first to
develop an understanding of the present state of IR/IPE. Chapter 2 argues against the
usual presentation of IR schools in three ideologies or paradigms. Although initially an
important step in acknowledging and legitimating debates and pluralism in the discipline,
this self-description of the discipline has become an easy excuse for limiting academic
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
debates. It does not illuminate many of those theoretical exhanges within which the
reconceptualisations of power actually took place. Chapter 3 touches the methodological
underpinnings of this conceptual analysis. It argues that power is an ambivalent concept
which derives its exact meaning from the meta-theoretical frameworks and substantial
theories in which it is embedded. Furthermore, the particular concept of power makes it
particularly appealing in a crisis of the definition of politics. As will be shown, not the
concept as such but the attribution of power as the origins of effects and outcomes is
inherently linked to politics by its property of suggesting responsibilities and requiring
justifications. Attributing power is part of a redefinition of the “art of the possible”. New
concepts of power, as they arise in the 1970s and 1980s in IR/IPE, are therefore both a
reflection of changing world politics and part of this very change by their feedback on the
definition of what politically can be done.
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2
International Theory after the Inter-Paradigm Debate
If we had to follow the conventional self-description of the IR discipline, a conceptual
analysis should compare a Realist, a liberal and a structuralist concept of power. One
could certainly construct such concepts. They would neither reflect the purposes, nor the
debates, for which new concepts of power appeared since the crisis of Realism.
Instead of adding just another triad to the already impressive list1, the present study
follows a sociological approach playing out the relation of the internal history of international theory (the discursive practice) and the external history (the contextual setting of
the academics and their discipline). With this approach, the Inter-Paradigm Debate (IPD)
appears not as the discovery of unbridgeable theoretical differences, but as a reification
of historical categories. In the 1970s-1980s, Kuhn’s theory of scientific (r)evolution
heralded a much longed for period of theoretical pluralism in IR. Whether wittingly or not
however, this window was quickly closed by reducing meta-theoretical claims to normative differences. The debates which have triggered the crisis of Realism and from which
the present power reconceptualisations derives, are still largely unresolved.
To understand the context of power reconceptualisations, the present chapter attempts
to show first the insufficiencies of the established self-description of the discipline in
triads. After presenting the main argument of the IPD and its self-indulgent use of the
concepts of paradigm and incommensurability, I will try to show that after the decline of
Realism and the concomitant extension of significant variables and subfields, debates in
International Theory can be best understood as ongoing attempts to delimit the field of
inquiry. The discipline is looking for self-defining and justifying boundaries. This search
1
For a list of such triads, see Volker Rittberger & Hartwig Hummel, “Die Disziplin ‘Internationale
Beziehungen’ im deutschsprachigen Raum auf der Suche nach ihrer Identität: Entwicklung und Perspektiven”,
in Volker Rittberger (ed.), Theorien der Internationalen Beziehungen. Bestandsaufnahme und Forschungsperspektiven (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990), p. 23.
15
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DOI: 10.2870/47026
16
Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
spurred a recent epistemological turn in International Theory.2 This chapter will suggest
that a map of the metatheoretical positioning of today’s approaches gives a better understanding of present debates than the IPD.
After the crisis of the Realist paradigm, which had resolved this problem by individualising states and locating them in a state of nature (i.e. of war), there is still no
replacement. Deprived of paradigmatic certainty, we try to delimit the field. As in
Realism, concepts of power, have been used again to provide the core of the discipline.
1. “Colour it Kuhn”
The persistent and failed attempts to replace the declining Realist school, despite its
widely known internal insufficiencies, and the unsuccessful response of Realism to these
attacks, let some scholars believe in the irreducibility of different schools. In this context,
Kuhn’s concept of paradigm attracted many writers in IR, because it could provide a
rationale for the endless debates about assumptions. Yet, in their attempt to use Kuhn for
describing IR, Kuhn’s insights were distorted, and some genuinely newer debates in
IR/IPE deflected.3
1.1. The concept of paradigm
Kuhn works with a double concept of paradigm. The first, and most widely used, refers
to the underlying research programme which derives from a particular scientific achievement. It defines the relevant academic agenda, and suggests the “puzzles” to be solved.
Besides this knowledge function, the paradigm has a sociological function as a focal point
for the consensus of the scientific community. “This consensus need not involve an
acceptance of any explicit formulation of the paradigm’s content but is rather a general
acknowledgement of the exemplary role of the approach taken by the paradigm.”4 This
permits the self-definition and legitimation of the scientific community and its research.5
2
Richard Little, “International Relations and the Methodological Turn”, Political Studies, vol. XXXIX,
no. 3 (September 1991), pp. 463-478.
3
In an astonishing contrast to Kuhn and the Kuhnian turn in IR of the 1970s-1980s, Yale H. Ferguson
and Richard W. Mansbach criticise Kuhn for his supposedly cumulative and context-independent history of
science. See The Elusive Quest: Theory and International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989),
pp. 13-40, 212-218. It was exactly for the supposedly excessive importance given to contextual factors, that
Lakatos attacked Kuhn’s view of scientific revolutions as “mob-psychology” (“Methodology of Scientific
Research Programmes”, in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, p.
178). Kuhnian and Anti-Kuhnian fashions change, but the stories told are, in fact, often the same.
4
Gary Gutting, “Introduction”, in Gary Gutting (ed.), Paradigms and Revolutions. Appraisals and
Applications of Thomas Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science (Notre Dame, London: University of Notre Dame Press,
1980), pp. 1-2.
5
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1962/70), pp. 37, 19.
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International Theory after the Inter-Paradigm Debate
17
Kuhn’s central idea of a scientific revolution introduces a second aspect of “paradigms” which is “far wider than and ideologically prior to theory, i.e. a whole Weltanschauung.”6 For Kuhn, revolutions, i.e. the replacement of one paradigm by another, are
changes of “world view”: “When Aristotle and Galilei looked at swinging stones, the first
saw constrained fall, the second a pendulum.”7 This is, what Kuhn refers to as a “gestaltswitch”.
Since paradigms constitute the basic tool of “normal science”, normal science alone
cannot correct the paradigm. Paradigm shifts take place after a crisis. This crisis is not
necessarily induced by events in the real world which would have a direct impact on
research.8 It only happens when the underlying “world-view” which permitted the
scientists to construct the real world and to orient themselves within this construct is
shattered.9 The new paradigm is not chosen because it necessarily explains more or better,
but because it resolves these “anomalies” and promises greater achievements. Which
achievements are highly valued and which anomalies are considered necessary to resolve
requires a sociological analysis that integrates the disciplinary and non-disciplinary
environment.
Hence, Kuhn’s position is conventionalist. It is not relativist because scientific
progress is decided by the informed judgment of the scientific community. It is not rationalist either, because the rationality of beliefs depends itself on social factors. “What Kuhn
still doubts is only whether progress in puzzle-solving, or rather problem-solving, ability
constitutes ‘progress towards the truth’… Thus Kuhn sharply separates the empirical
success of a theory from the verisimilitude or ‘truth-likeliness’ of its ontology.”10
1.2. An obsession with triads
Despite Kuhn’s own scepticism, his approach was applied to social sciences. Part of the
literature focused on the first concept of paradigm as “normal science” as a legitimated
and dominating theoretical source for puzzle solving.11 Others questioned the validity of
Kuhn’s “revolution” and preferred Lakatos’ more cumulative (albeit also not teleological)
6
Margaret Mastermann, “The Nature of a Paradigm”, in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds), Criticism
and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 67.
7
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 121.
8
Therefore, it would be incorrect to say that theory development is necessarily “real-world following”.
For this latter argument, see K.J. Holsti, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Which are the Fairest Theories of All?”,
International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3 (September 1989), p. 257.
9
Reinhard Meyers, “Wie viele Schwalben machen einen Sommer? (Re-)Naissance der Internationalen
Politischen Ökonomie?”, Neue Politische Literatur, vol. 34, n. 1 (1989), p. 7.
10
Alan E. Musgrave, “Kuhn’s Second Thoughts”, in Gary Gutting (ed.), Paradigms and Revolutions.
Appraisals and Applications of Thomas Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science (Notre Dame, London: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1980), p. 49.
11
See, for instance, R.W. Mansbach and J. A. Vasquez, In Search for Theory. A New Paradigm for
Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); and John A. Vasquez, The Power of Power
Politics: A Critique (London: Frances Pinter, 1983).
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18
Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
view of scientific progress as superseding research programmes.12 Finally, a group of
scholars discussed the notion of incommensurability and the “Inter-Paradigm Debate”.
These latter have produced the by now widely used textbook triads of IR theories.
K.J.Holsti sees three “sufficient, and probably necessary, criteria to distinguish
between genuine paradigms in our field”13 (See Table 2.1).
Table 2.1. Holsti’s Divided Discipline.
Paradigms
Criteria
Classical
Tradition
Global
Society
Neomarxism
(1) causes of war and conditions of
peace/society/order; “an essential subsidiary problem is the nature of power”
= central
problematique
conditions for
global community
inequality/
exploitation
(2) the essential actors and/or units of
analysis
diplomaticmilitary
behaviour
of states
web of
transborder
interactions
class/
social
groups
(3) images of the world/system/society
of states
anarchy
world society
in a global
economy
core periphery
This threefold view of IR/IPE is, however, not limited to Realists. Michael Banks,
disciple of John Burton’s “World Society” approach, establishes a similar triptych (See
Table 2.2). He gives different names and includes regime analysis out of the interdependence tradition within the “Global Society” which he calls “pluralism”.14
Out of this apparent irreducibility of values, Holsti and Banks derive far-reaching conclusions about the possible evolution of IR. The search for a sole paradigm in IR is vain.
12
Robert O. Keohane (1983) “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond”, in his edited
Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 158-203; and Marc Blaug,
“Kuhn versus Lakatos, or paradigms versus research programmes in the history of economics”, History of
Political Economy, vol. 7 (1975), pp. 399-433. For a more Kuhnian vision of the discipline of economics, see
Bert Hamminga, Neoclassical Theory Structure and Theory Development. An Empirical-Philosophical CaseStudy Concerning the Theory of International Trade (Berlin, New York et al.: Springer-Verlag, 1983).
13
K.J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline. Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory (Boston: Allen
& Unwin, 1985), p. 11. The reversal of criteria (1) with the answer given by the classical paradigm is a
Freudian slip of the Classical Realist Holsti himself. See pp. 9-10.
14
Michael Banks, “The Inter-Paradigm Debate”, in A.J.R. Groom and Margot Light (eds), International
Relations. A Handbook of Current Theory (London: Frances Pinter, 1985), pp. 7-26.
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International Theory after the Inter-Paradigm Debate
19
Table 2.2. Michael Banks’ three paradigms.
Realism
Pluralism
Structuralism
“Billiard-ball”
“cobweb”
“multi-headed
octopus”
Actors
states
states & others
classes
Dynamics
force
complex social
movements
economics
Dependent
variables
explain what states
do
explain all major
world events
explain inequality and
poverty
Scope of the
study of IR
interstate relations
relations between
all actors & market & nationalism
IR = surface phenomena of the totality of
social relations and
modes of production
Paradigms
Criteria
Basic image
There can be no debate and appraisal of validity across, but only within paradigms.15
Holsti uses the argument to criticise attempts to synthesise Marxism and Realism. Banks
aims at “Realism-plus-grafted-on-components”.16 By this, he means a kind of “hooveringeffect”, in which Realism swallows everything valuable stemming from other paradigms.
In this context, the Kuhnian concept of paradigm in its sense of Weltanschauung has
very appealing implications. Kuhn argues that paradigms have a logic of their own; they
are incommensurable. One paradigm cannot judge the other. To prefer one paradigm instead of another cannot be rationalised by any non-circular argument.17 If this concept
were right, it would provide a suitable protective belt for any school of thought. “Don’t
criticise me, we speak different languages.” Some scholars in IR have surrendered to this
marvellous invitation and hopelessly trivialised Kuhn’s important insights. Holsti
conceptualises paradigms with a criterion for “images of the world”. Yet he is sincere
enough to admit in a footnote that
There are numerous definitions of paradigms, but for our purpose the notion of their
function is most important. They are basically selecting devices which imposes some…
15
See also R.D. McKinlay and Richard Little, Global Problems and World Order (Maddison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), pp. 266-73.
16
Michael Banks, “The evolution of international relations”, in Michael Banks (ed.), Conflict in World
Society. A new perspective on international relations (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984), p. 18.
17
Barry Barnes, T.S. Kuhn and social science (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 65.
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Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
coherence on an infinite universe of facts and data which, by themselves, have no
meaning… I realize that this use of the term paradigm is somewhat narrower than the
meaning developed by Thomas Kuhn… To him, paradigms are rooted not just in
rationally analyzable differences, but in trans-rational perceptions, or gestalts.18
One does not need, therefore, to show that the paradigms as presented here are indeed
incommensurable. Holsti cannot use this concept for opposing syntheses, because he
explicitly excludes the only meaning of incommensurability, based on a holistic theory of
meaning, which would serve the purpose. Therefore he has to introduce values instead of
“gestalts” to contend that synthesis of paradigms is impossible. Finally, he asks about the
desirability “of a synthesis between world views which have diametrically opposed normative claims and ideals.”19 Thus, whereas Banks had argued for the Inter-ParadigmDebate to open up the field of International Relations for marginalised approaches, Holsti
seems committed to closing off his favoured approach from any attacks on its assumptions.20
Even the newer discipline IPE has not been spared by these triads, generally subsumed as the “economic” theories under the three paradigms: nationalism (mercantilism),
liberalism, Marxism (dependency).21 Robert Gilpin’s initial definition of IPE in the
1970s, was derived from the level of the agent as the simultaneous pursuit of power and
wealth. Yet, driven by his own definition, he came to conclude in 1987 that because of
its exclusion of power concerns “liberalism lacks a true political economy.”22 He then
saved a liberal account by redefining IPE as the interplay of a global market (the liberal
ideal type) and its political organisation. This corresponds to the more typical selfdescription of IPE in the 1980s, namely the (international) State-Market Nexus.23 Hence
liberalism can be saved because, although it still lacks a political economy, it is at least
a necessary ingredient for the understanding of markets. The reason for this change lies
in the generalised perception that there are three incompatible value-systems. To conceptualise different schools with the overriding concern of distinguishing three normative
positions leads to conceptual difficulties in making them fit. Consequently Gilpin, honestly
18
The Dividing Discipline, p. 14, fn. 6. This use of paradigm is interchangeable with the traditional use
of “theory” in IR. If Holsti makes a typology of theories, the number of three appears rather arbitrary.
19
The Dividing Discipline, pp. 132, 77.
20
For another way to use “incommensurability” as a closing procedure, see Stephen D. Krasner, “Toward
Understanding in International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1 (1985), pp. 137-144.
21
See, for instance, Robert Gilpin, “Three Models of the Future”, International Organization, vol. 29, no.
1 (Winter 1975), pp. 37-60 and (with Jean M. Gilpin), The Political Economy of International Relations
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), chapter 2; Nazli Choucri, “International Political Economy: A
Theoretical Perspective”, in A. George, O. Holsti, R. Siverson (eds), Change in the International System
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1980), pp. 103-129; J.R. Barry Jones, “International Political Economy: Problems
and Issues. Part I”, Review of International Studies, vol. 7 (1982), pp. 245-260; Stephen Gill and David Law,
The Global Political Economy (New York et al.: Harvester Wheatsheaf Press, 1988), Part I.
22
The Political Economy of International Relations, p. 45.
23
This redefinition splits up what should be united in IPE, politics and economics.
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International Theory after the Inter-Paradigm Debate
21
admiiting his own ambivalences, defines himself as a liberal in a Realist world or a
Marxist world of class struggle.24
The cohesion of our triptychs relies then upon a rationalisation of three main political
ideologies, as they “naturally” appear to the Anglo-American core of IR: conservatism,
liberalism (in its US sense) and radicalism. This also explains the heterogeneity in
particular of the middle category, where Banks, for instance, mixed Beitz, Keohane & Nye
with his own World Society paradigm. In one or the other definition, all can be considered
“liberals”.25 Hence, values-incompatibility becomes the taken-for-granted background for
theoretical debate. There is no argument why specific normative concerns are automatically tied to specific schools of explanation. It is assumed, but not shown why particular
variables, methodologies, and epistemological assumptions are inherently and exclusively
tied to one value-system. Hence, there is no a priori reason to infer from value
incompatibility a case for paradigm incommensurability, even though the latter might well
exist on the epistemological level.26
Therefore, it seems preferable to understand the three competing schools as an indication of the fragmentation of international studies in the specific period of the 1970s and
1980s, where Realism has lost its hegemony. In other words, the IPD is not the last word
that can forever guide our understanding, but it corresponds to a historical stage of the
discourse in International Relations. Confronted with fragmentation, value-distinctions are
used to legitimate established research programmes. By the same token, the IPD sheds the
more fundamental challenge to the empiricist stronghold in IR/IPE. The metatheoretical
debate has been reduced from the construction of knowledge via Weltanschauung to the
well-known value-fact distinction of empiricist research.27 A predefined theoretical
pluralism allowed academic business-as-usual. The IPD started by protecting challengers
of Realism from being swept away. Over time it became a welcome barrier against any
criticism and a good legitimation for academic routine. A policy of academic spheres of
influence became wrapped up in a somewhat scientific Kuhnian blanket.28
24
“The Richness of the Realist Tradition”, in R. Keohane (ed.) Neorealism and Its Critics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986) p. 304. Also Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye repeatedly stress that “liberalism and realism are not two incommensurable paradigms” (“Power and Interdependence Revisited,” International Organization, vol. 41, no. 4 (Autumn 1987), p. 728 f.) and Keohane joins Gilpin by saying that if
the liberal position is defined by values, such as the priority given to freedom, he does not see why one
cannot be in this sense liberal and academically a Realist. See International Institutions and State Power.
Essay in International Relations Theory (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), p. 10.
25
Therefore, the liberal or middle-way paradigm remains the one which eludes any clear-cut definition.
For a similar critique of the Grotian (as opposed to the Hobbesian and Kantian) tradition, see R.B.J. Walker,
Ethics, Modernity and the Theory of International Relations (Paper presented at the Center for International
Studies, Princeton University, 1988/89), mimeo, p. 31.
26
For similar thoughts, see Mark Neufeld, “Reflexivity and International Relations Theory”, Millennium,
vol. 22, no. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 53-76.
27
For a similar argument, see in particular Jim George, “Of Incarceration and Closure: Neo-Realism and
the New/Old World Order”, Millennium, vol. 22, no. 2 (Summer 1993), pp. 202ff.
28
For the same critique, see Friedrich Kratochwil, “The embarassment of changes: neo-realism and the
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Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
The discipline started to argue about its foundations when its paradigm was in a crisis.
This allowed research at the fringes of the established canon.29 Threatened in its identity,
the discipline welcomed any barriers to legitimate an independent status. Getting rid of
value-derived triads, one can rescue the issues on the contested boundaries of the discipline which the IPD only temporarily fixed.
2. Searching borders
Kuhn states that a paradigm governs, in the first instance, not a subject-matter, but a group
of practitioners. Any research on paradigms should try to locate the scientific group.30
During the Cold War, Realist debates became the self-definition of the discipline.31
Realism as a disciplinary paradigm should be understood as an interaction of its practitioners with their environment after the demise of (so-called) idealist appeasement. There
is a sense in which Cold War, Realism, and IR as a US social science coincide.32
This was undermined by several developments. The organisation of welfare states in
an order of “embedded liberalism”33 considerably widened the scope of state politics;
indeed, it redefined classical Realist “high politics”. At the same time, the specific US
political environment of superpower détente after Cuba and the US war in Vietnam
undermined Realism’s grip on the practitioners. Henry Kissinger’s linkage-update of the
Concert of Europe could not succeed in its ambition of comprehensive great power
management, because modern states can control neither domestic politics, foreign allies,
nor finally the transnational politics of non-state actors, in such a way as to assure its
science of Realpolitik without politics”, Review of International Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (January 1993), p. 68.
Since the IPD assured some pluralism, some commentators criticise the attempts to get to a “next stage” of
IR theory. See Yosef Lapid, “Quo Vadis International Relations? Further Reflections on the ‘Next Stage’ of
International Theory”, Millennium, vol. 18, no. 1 (1989), pp. 82-84. The argument is partly right, because
these critiques generally ask for a more self-reflexive discipline. The present pluralism as a form of “academic
spheres of influence” is, however, not necessarily conducive to such reflection.
29
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 91.
30
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 180.
31
“Realist debates” refers to the debates spurred by the Realist paradigm. Hence, the Realist-idealist
debate is part and parcel of the Realist agenda. Indeed, Realism derives its initial legitimation and credibility
exactly from this (self-constructed) antagonism.
32
Stanley Hoffmann, “An American Social Science: International Relations”, Dædalus, vol. 106, no. 3
(1977), pp. 41-60; Roger Tooze, “International Political Economy”, in Steve Smith (ed.), International
Relations. British and American Perspectives (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 108-125; Steve Smith, “Paradigm
Dominance in IR: The Development of International Relations as a Social Science”, Millennium, vol. 16, no.
2 (Summer 1987), pp. 189-206.
33
John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the
Postwar Economic Order”, International Organization, vol. 36, no. 2 (Spring 1982), pp. 379-415. See also
his more recent discussion, “Embedded Liberalism Revisited: Institutions and Progress in International
Economic Relations”, in Emanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford (eds), Progress in Postwar International
Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 202-234.
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implementation.34 Even though linkage policies try consciously to integrate economic
affairs into security policies, these very linkages have already developed outside the
centralised control of the state or state-system. Détente is simultaneously the perfection
of superpower-diplomacy in the 20th Century and the symbol for its decline.
The decline of the Realist paradigm, both in the drawing of the agenda and the selfjustification of the discipline’s members, has resulted in (and is a result of) an expanding
research agenda of IR. The discipline, confronted with an encompassing global net, has
tried different closures which are necessary for a more focused research. This happened
at the level of the subject matter, and more recently at its metatheoretical foundations. It
is at this level where incommensurability might possibly apply and the present debate can
be more satisfactorily framed.
2.1. The global net
The behavioral revolution, even though often within the Realist paradigm, has undermined
one crucial paradigmatic function: by presupposing a common methodology for domestic
and foreign policy research, it justified the intrusion of sociological concepts, approaches
and standards into the discourse of IR. In other words, it destroyed the internal/external
distinction upon which the Realist paradigm relies.35 It de-legitimated the paradigm’s
claim that the international realm is qualitatively different from domestic social systems
and therefore requires different research (and a different discipline).
The transnationalist research programme started off with questions concerning the
effects of transnationalisation on democratic control in welfare and developing states. It
problematised the mismatch between the transnationalisation of politics which were still
controlled and legitimated by national constituencies.36 During the 1970s, the initial
impulse to explore this mismatch has been increasingly forgotten. Keohane and Nye summarised the resulting research programme for the 1970s, when they asked for a synthesis
of inter-governmental relations with bureaucratic politics and transnational approaches.37
Hence, IR includes the state-society link only at the level of the decision-making system.
As a shorthand, one could present this stage as a global net (See Figure 2.1. The
Eastonian input-output model is chosen deliberately to acknowledge the impact of more
behavioural domestic political science on IR). The debate in IR can be understood as
different attempts to either broaden or restrict this picture.
34
Stanley Hoffmann, Primacy or World Order. American Foreign Policy since the Cold War (New York:
McGraw Hill, 1978), chapter 2; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. A Critical Appraisal of
Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), chapter 10.
35
R.B.J. Walker argues in Political Theory and the Transformation of World Politics (Princeton. World
Orders Study Program. Occasional Papers No. 8), pp. 14-15, that the two great debates arrived where two
challengers (universalist idealism and general behavioralism) challenged the specificity of IR.
36
See Karl Kaiser, “Transnationale Politik. Zu einer Theorie der multinationalen Politik”, in Ernst-Otto
Czempiel (ed.), Die anachronistische Souveränität (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1969), pp. 80-109.
37
Transnational Relations and World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 380.
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Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
Figure 2.1. The global net.
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2.2. Closure and Opening of the subject-matter
Systemic Realism provides a “parsimonious” restriction of this wide net. First, it dumps
every non-structural variance to the domestic level38, reserving an independent domain
for the discipline of IR. Second, it reduces the explanatory range of IR theory. It cannot
explain everything, but just some important fundamentals. And since systemic Realism
provided these basics, future theorisation cannot be but epicycles around this theory.
The still loose concept of IPE attracted many challengers who tried to overcome this
reduction of their activity. From the outset, IPE included economic dynamics into international analysis, and not just as a contextual factor. Closure occurred quickly, however.
Hegemonic Stability Theory is by now not very much else than an approach to study the
effect of changing power relations on the provision of a public good.39 True, the list
grows with items to be included into the assessment of the Balance of Power, and of
spheres that are subject to its ruling. Neorealist versions of regime analysis split up an
international system into issue-areas which concerns states and non-state actors alike.40
Thus, part of IPE, which Susan Strange castigates as “Politics of International Economic
Relations” has been coopted into the mainstream research programme.41 For the rest, IR
immunises itself by declaring IPE another discipline.
2.3. The meta-theoretical debate
The restriction of IR’s outskirts has been coupled with an attempt to discipline methodology and epistemology. Waltz has reimported the economic approach with its specific
link of rational choice theory and market theory. These two levels of analysis are
inextricably linked. The market structure must be taken for granted for the rational choice
approach to work. The utilitarian drive of the units must be assumed for the market logic
to follow. Although particular analyses, like Waltz’s for instance, can opt to analyze from
the structural level, the economic approach in its IR version has as its basic ontology
states, and as underlying dynamics, national power(s). Accordingly, Neorealism can be
criticised both on the assumptions and restrictions of its micro- and macro-theory.42
38
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye jr., “Power and Interdependence Revisited,” p. 746.
For this stress on the public good argument as the core of HST, see Duncan Snidal, “The Limits of
Hegemonic Stability Theory”, International Organization, vol. 39, no. 4 (Autumn 1985), pp. 579-614.
40
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony. Cooperation and Conflict in the World Political Economy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
41
See for instance in States and Markets. An Introduction of International Political Economy (London
et al.: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 12-13.
42
This is Richard Ashley’s and Alexander Wendt’s position in their debate with Martin Hollis and Steve
Smith. See Richard Ashley, “The Poverty of Neorealism”, in R. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics,
pp. 158-203; Alexander Wendt, “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations,” International
Organization, vol. 41, no. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 337-370; Alexander Wendt, “Bridging the Theory/MetaTheory Gap in International Theory”, Review of International Studies, vol. 17, no. 4 (October 1991), pp. 383392; Martin Hollis & Steve Smith, “Beware of gurus: structure and action in international relations”, same
issue, pp. 393-410. See also the rejoinders: Alexander Wendt, “Level of Analysis vs. Agents and Structures:
39
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Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
The attacks have been substantially most damaging here, even though this is easily
swept aside with our favourite reply that the debate is about irresolvable value-assumptions. This is all the more astonishing, because those interventions that were most widely
held to be representative of the debate pointed extensively to a wider epistemological
realm — and not to values.43
Regimes and game-theoretical rational choice approaches that underlie new institutionalism are attacked for their methodological individualism. Kratochwil and Ruggie
argue, that even accepting the possibility of such an approach, regime theory entails a
clash between its individualist methodology and its intersubjective ontology.44 This
charge has never been answered in the literature. Ashley and Wendt have shown the
weaknesses of the market-international affairs analogy of microeconomic approaches that
leave out ways to study the emergence of states and of their power, i.e. the constitution
of the realm we take for granted as international. Change is the black box of such an
approach. By taking unified actors as given, rational choice approaches weaken the
apprehension of their historicity and their domestic dimension and actually undermine the
transnational insights with which the regime programme started off.45
Meanwhile, scientism has been widely attacked, but not in a defence of the established
research programme, as during the Second Debate. The “Post-Positivist” Debate touches
the meta-theoretical level where the power/knowledge link is concealed.46
2.4. International Theory at the beginning of the 1990s
Mapping IR theories
The dynamics of the present debates cannot be retraced by the IPD. By crossing the two
major organising principles of today’s metatheoretical debate (naturalism versus
interpretivism and individualism versus holism), a map of today’s approaches can be
Part III”, Review of International Studies, vol. 18, no. 2 (April 1992), pp. 181-85; Martin Hollis & Steve
Smith, “Structure and Action: Further Comment”, same issue, pp. 187-88.
43
Hayward Alker & Thomas Biersteker, “Notes for a Future Archaeologist of International Savoir Faire,”
International Studies Quarterly, vol. 28 (1984), pp. 121-142; Friedrich Kratochwil & John Gerard Ruggie,
“International Organization: a State of the Art on the Art of the State,” International Organization, vol. 40,
no. 4 (Autumn 1986), pp. 753-775.
44
“International Organization: A State of the Art on the Art of the State.”
45
Richard Ashley, “The Poverty of Neorealism” and Alexander Wendt, “The Agent-Structure Problem
in International Relations”; For the last point, see Hayward Alker, “The Presumption of Anarchy in World
Politics,” in H. Alker & R. Ashley, After Neorealism: Anarchy, Power and International Collaboration
(quotable draft from 1986, forthcoming), p. 21.
46
For a good presentation, see Yosef Lapid, “The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory
in a Post-Positivist Era”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33 (1989), pp. 235-254. These positions will
be introduced in Part III. See also Mark Hoffman, “Reconstruction, Reinscription, Rearticulation: Four Voices
in Critical International Theory”, Millennium, vol. 20, no. 2 (Spring 1991), pp. 169-185, provides a succinct
and thoughtful comparison.
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established that clarifies those links at which theories engage in contests and rapprochements (See Table 2.3). Let me introduce the categories of the typology.47
Naturalism refers to the positivist epistemology which implies:
- methodological monism, i.e. the idea of the unity of scientific method amidst the
diversity of subject matter of scientific investigation;
- mathematical ideals of perfection, i.e. the idea that mathematics and physics set the
standard of the development of a science, including the humanities. This entails the search
for universal or general laws as the specific research program;
- a subsumption-theoretic view of scientific explanation, i.e. the explanatory methodology
whereby from covering (generally causal) laws hypothesis are deduced and particular cases
subsumed and thereby explained;
- falsification as the scientific demarcation criterion, i.e. what separates science from other
undertakings and scientific theory from ideology.48
Interpretive approaches towards science oppose these fundamental tenets of positivism.
The starting point of the hermeneutical approach is the idea that whereas in the natural
sciences the researchers and their object are independent, humanities have to deal with an
internal individual or intersubjective relation. Human beings cannot be subsumed under
the category of unanimated or unconscious “objects”. The validity of a hypothesis cannot
be “tested” against an independent outside world. This would presuppose a direct access
to an external (that is mind-independent) world. Falsification in the sense of a test with
the real world is, therefore, not a possible demarcation criterion for human sciences. The
validity can only be assessed by the intersubjectively shared conventional criteria of the
participants in a specific (here scientific) discourse. The scientific project consists therefore
in making sense (within one’s intersubjectively shared meanings) of particular moments
in history. Only ex post rationalisations are possible, generally no predictions.
On the methodological/ontological axis, individualism refers to the position that any
explanation must, in the last instance, be reduced to individual action, although the outcome might not reflect individual intention. If the action is conceived as a automatism as
in some behavioral psychological theories or in strong utilitarian approaches, then it falls
in the top left corner. But there is also individualist action in the hermeneutical tradition,
as for instance, in Weberian approaches where the always contingent meaning context of
the individual action must be reconstructed. Thus, regime approaches fall as game theory
47
See also Davide Sparti, Se un leone potesse parlare. Indagini sul comprendere e spiegare (Firenze:
Sansoni, 1992). In IR, see Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making; Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining
and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); and Walter Carlsnaes, “The
Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3
(September 1992), p. 249.
48
See also Georg Henrik von Wright, Explanation and Understanding (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1971), p. 4.
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Intepretivism
Naturalism
3. Morgenthau (1st
edition), Niebuhr
2. Morgenthau
(2nd edition)
1. World Society
(Burton)
Human Nature
(Linklater, Beitz, Nardin)
Normative theories
3. Cognitive Map
1. Bureaucratic Politics
2. Operational Code
(George)
Foreign Policy Analysis
English School of
IR
“Historical
Sociology” (Aron)
Comparative Political Economy
(Katzenstein)
Institutionalism
Economics of IR (Bruno Frey)
Strategics
Rational Choice
Game Theory
Individualism
World System Analysis
(ChaseDunn)
(structural)
functionalism
Post-Structuralism
(Walker, Ashley)
Constructivism
(Onuf, Wendt)
Critical Theory
(Kratochwil)
Dependency
(Cardoso, Evans)
Gramscian Analysis (Cox)
Regime
Hegemonic
Stability Theory
(Kaplan)
Systemic
Realism (Waltz)
Holism
28
Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
Table 2.3 A mapping of theories in IR/IPE at the beginning of the 1990s.
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in the first and as Weberian approaches in the last category.49 Holism must be distinguished from mere collective action by looking at the attribution of the underlying
dynamic. Collective action, although not necessarily reflecting individual intentionality,
is derived from it. A holistic approach sees the dynamic of the whole as self-perpetrating.
If these are objective laws from which one can derive the functioning of its parts, as the
classical marxist laws of capitalism, then it is part of naturalism. For hermeneutic holists,
there can be no objectivised structures, but only intersubjective practices which for their
reproduction must be enacted by individual action.
Some research programmes cut across the categories. Empiricism can be found in all
except the intersubjective category. The same applies for the present Neorealism/Neoinstitutionalism debate. In other words, to be anti-Realist does not necessarily imply
leaving empiricism, as many so-called idealist or radical approaches prove. Feminist
theories of IR can be located at the post-structuralist, liberal (close to normative) and
materialist position.50
“Rationalism” versus “reflectivism”?
Do we conclude that the main divide in the theoretical debate is between (Mainstream)
“Rationalism” and its challengers, the “reflectivists”? Although designed to open debate,
Keohane’s now widely used dichotomy mobilises a bias of closure. It creates a residual
category, the “reflectivists”, who, in turn, are found to lack an empirical research programme.51
First of all, this categorisation takes the empiricist epistemology for granted. Since
there have been many misunderstandings of this point, it is worth recalling that it is not
empirical research as such which makes the difference, but what is meant by it. The empiricist approach takes the “real world as it is” and tries to create either an intentional
account or a causal construct between categories for its explanation. Non-empiricist
approaches problematise the relation between categories and the object of study, where
the conceptualisation of the research is not independent from its result. It does not assume
an independent “real world” to be used as neutral testing ground. Theory is not prior to
49
To avoid this typological problem, Mark Neufeld distinguishes between “strict” and “meaning-oriented
behaviouralism” which he integrates into the positivist category, thereby reserving for interpretive theories
only intersubjective meaning approaches. See his “Interpretation and the ‘Science’ of International Relations”,
Review of International Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (January 1993), in particular pp. 41-49.
50
Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson, “The Radical Future of Realism: Feminist Subversions of
IR Theory,” Alternatives, vol. 16 (1991), pp. 67-106.
51
Robert O. Keohane (1987) “International Institutions: Two Approaches”, in his State Power and International Institutions. Essays in International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), p. 173.
It is impressive to what extent this debate echoes the long standing Positivism-Debate in German sociology
to which a post-structuralist twist has been added. See for instance, Wolfgang Abendroth, “International
Relations, Völkerrecht und Außenpolitik als Teildisziplinen der politischen Wissenschaft - ein Disput mit
Ernst-Otto Czempiel”, in Ekkehart Krippendorff (ed.), Internationale Beziehungen (Köln: Kiepenheuer &
Witsch, 1973), pp. 13-37.
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Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
nature as such. Yet when we cut out parts of this nature as “facts” or “events”, the selection relies on theory. This entails that empirical research cannot be done without prior
clarification of its philosophical and meta-theoretical commitments.52
Secondly, it also means that empirical research can have a meaning different from that
empiricists assume. Those who have been most attacked for lacking an empirical research
programme are post-structuralists. Their empirical referent are (in particular discursive)
practices. Indeed, constructivists and post-structuralists have concentrated for a long time
to study how theoretical discourses in IR have embedded the way we conceive and debate
our field and activity. It is empirical to study what experts do. Keohane’s claim is hence
either misleading or ironic. It is misleading, if the study of the way IR experts explain
world events, which as such is also an event, is considered non-empirical.53 It is ironic,
if what experts do is considered insignificant and therefore empirically negligible, because
this relevance is the very justification for many positivist studies.
3. Theoretical rapprochements as the context of new power concepts
The demise of the state-system as the main reference for conceiving “world politics” has
left international theory in an unbalanced position. In the preceding section, some metatheoretical borders have been drawn. This section develops some of the underlying themes
of the emerging identity outside the Mainstream debate which takes place in the greyshaded area.
The most fundamental insight seems to spring from a major historisation (and for
some: genealogy) of the present international system in its different aspects: it emerged
at the interface of the emergence of the modern state, the first real international polity, the
first major market extension and the beginning of capitalism, and finally rationalism
(Enlightenment) and democratic theory. Today’s theory is, in a nutshell, a critical reflection of, and for some a move beyond, modernity’s heritage in changing circumstances.
Two main dialogues on the ground of the hermeneutical tradition derive from it: one
in social and political theory and one in historical sociology/political economy. The first
is the meeting point of Critical theory with normative theory including in both feminist
theories; the second is a historicist Realist and Dependency rapprochement within IPE. On
the base of a constructivist epistemological analysis, the first reapprehends in particular
the anarchy/sovereignty concept. Adding historical sociology, the second reconsiders the
52
See also R.B.J. Walker’s response to Keohane in “History and Structure in the Theory of International
Relations”, Millennium, vol. 18, no. 2 (Summer 1989), p. 178.
53
It would come close to the well-established fallacy to conceive of the empirical world only as its
material part. “[T]he paradigms which order ‘reality’ are part of the reality they order,… language is part of
the social structure and not epiphenomenal to it, and… we are studying an aspect of reality when we study
the ways in which it appeared real to the persons to whom it was more real than anyone else.” See J.G.A.
Pocock, “Language and Their Implications: The Transformation of the Study of Political Thought”, in his
Politics, Language and Time. Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1973), p. 38.
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state/society nexus. Both join in the reconceptualisation of power in the contemporary
global political economy.
3.1. Political theory beyond the anarchy/sovereignty divide
Anarchy-sovereignty has been found to be the basic double concept of the Neorealist
research programme, its deconstruction one of the challenging undertakings of the 1980s.
Several writers were sceptical of the anarchy concept as it appeared in Waltz. It
allowed only for two state of affairs, one being hierarchy (as in domestic societies), the
other being anarchy. Even though Realists are explicit that anarchy does not mean chaos,
the internal/external distinction is paradigmatic.54 Traditionally the anarchy-sovereignty
distinction has been attacked for its crude representation of a Hobbesian state of war
(which, in fact, takes Hobbes’ domestic order before Leviathan as its reference point). The
English School qualified it as an international (anarchical) society. Other try to refer to a
wider concept of rule (Herrschaft).55 The post-structuralist tradition aimed at showing
the social construction of what international anarchy meant for world poltics.
In a next step, the concept of sovereignty is analysed as a silencing practice that excludes from discourse understandings of identity that are outside the modern state. The
idea of sovereignty has historically played a crucial role in bridging crucial rifts. Born at
the beginning of the modern state-system it still offers both a spatial and temporal solution
to reconcile universalism (as the aspirations of Medieval Christendom) and community
particularism. This solution consists in the sharp distinction between on the one hand
political life inside a community, where progress is possible, and on the other hand mere
relations outside the territorial boundaries that are the realm of repetition and where “the
present is destined to return.”56 This allows us to stop the potential common identity of
mankind at the particularistic organisation in states.57
Here the debate meets recent normative theory. One of the main precepts of the
Realist inter-state political approach is the application of the private/public distinction to
the internal/external divide. Especially strong in the writings of Kissinger, this idea isolates
the inter-state realm as a public and thus “political” space. Taking plurality for granted
(both as an assumption of sovereignty-anarchy and as moral precept), the clash of
incompatible or even incommensurable world views and policy aims can only be limited
54
For a Realist-inspired critique of this poor concept of structure, see John Gerard Ruggie, “Continuity
and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis”, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 131-157, which is taken up as a major inspiration for a reformulation of
Neorealism that develops the second tier of Waltz’s approach in Barry Buzan, Charles Jones and Richard
Little, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
55
Nicholas Onuf & Frank Klink, “Anarchy, Authority, Rule”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33
(1989), pp. 149-173.
56
R.B.J. Walker, “State Sovereignty and the Articulation of Political Space/Time,” Millennium, vol. 20,
no. 4 (Autumn 1991), pp. 458-59.
57
Andrew Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London: Macmillan,
1982).
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Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
by confining them to a private, i.e. “domestic” sphere.58 The “privatisation” of international politics, understood as an attempt to export the national, private conception of
politics, would involve the extinction of plurality and render diplomacy impossible. Indeed, the attempt to think politics globally is considered most destabilising.59
Recent democratic theory has more explicitly focused on the loosening references to
territories and communities, or in other words, the transnational networks and actors that
undermine the state capacity to control the international private-public divide.60 Major
decision of a national polity elude national decision bodies and, in turn, major actions here
can affect, even non-intentionally, state-society relations elsewhere. By the same token,
globalisation, with its temporal integration, challenges political theory whose universalist
aspirations often stop arbitrarily at national borders, but that, as well, provides with its
impetus on rights (human rights including possibly also ecology and development) one
of the new major driving forces in international affairs.61
These issues expand the realm of world politics. This is the context for new
definitions of power. Once anarchy is not something naturally given, its meaning for
world politics is contested. Diplomatic (and other) practices fill this anarchical void. Poststructuralism perceives power phenomena in this diplomatic construction of power politics.
Furthermore, Waltz’ positivistic turn has been criticised as a power practice itself, because
its epistemology effects a restriction of the agenda of question that can be reasonably
asked.
3.2. Historicised IPE around the state-society nexus
Other, for the IPD unexpected, rapprochements in the hermeneutical tradition concern IR’s
“historical sociologists” (Aron, Hoffmann, Rosecrance), the English School, and writers
stemming originally from Marxist backgrounds.62 These Realist writers have also attract-
58
This idea is particularly well developed in Henry A. Kissinger (1957) A World Restored. The Politics
of Conservatism in a Revolutionary Era (London: Victor Gallantz, 1977).
59
This is called “nationalist universalism” by Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations. The Struggle
for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948).
60
David Held, “Democracy, the Nation-State, and the Global System”, Economy and Society, vol. 20, no.
2 (May 1991), pp. 138-172.
61
Bull himself seemed to have come closer to a position where the individual is not only object, but also
subject of international affairs. Topics like humanitarian intervention emerge as legitimate on the agenda. See
R.J. Vincent, “Order in International Politics”, in J.D.B. Miller and R.J.Vincent (eds), Order and Violence.
Hedley Bull and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 38-64. For a recent attempt to
deconstruct the traditional normative debate, see in particular Heikki Patomäki, “From Normative Utopias to
Political Dialectics: Beyond a Deconstruction of the Brown-Hoffman Debate”, Millennium, vol. 21, no. 1
(Spring 1992), pp. 53-75.
62
See for instance Fred Halliday’s interest in Richard Rosecrance’s Action and Reaction in World Politics.
International Systems in Perspective (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963/77 2nd ed.) in “‘The Sixth Great Power’:
on the Study of Revolutions and International Relations,” Review of International Studies, vol. 16, (1990),
pp. 169-185.
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International Theory after the Inter-Paradigm Debate
33
ed the defense of scholars from Critical Theory for their historical sensitivity.63 The impact of comparative historical sociology on IR in the 1980s opens up a debate largely on
Weberian grounds where Classical Realism can meet dependency approaches.
The theoretical context in which this rapprochement takes place is the reconceptualisation of the state or state-society relations in the global political economy.64 Once the
basic anarchy/sovereignty divide is attacked, state-society relations are no longer the implicit foundations of an international society of states, but the very ground on which international relations take place. International relations are not “above” societal relations, but
the transborder processes that both stem from and embrace them. Indeed, increasingly
there is a reference to the “internationalisation” of both the state and society which tries
to overcome the sole spatial division on which these two concepts have been based.
It is probably not fortuitous that writers in IPE have been particularly sensitive to
these issues. The never-neutral working of the increasingly global market makes a view
that encompasses particular state(-society)-market articulations all the more compelling.
Traditionally, Realists were not over-willing to do so. Yet, more recently, in an attempt
to include domestic politics into the overall analysis, a small theory of the state has been
presented. It remains a static view of the domestic environment: a weak/strong state
distinction as one explanatory variable for policy action or economic development.65 This
takes for granted what should be explained: in the absence of an autarchic state development in world politics today, why is it that some states come to be weak? States have to
be apprehended in the historical and societal setting as something more than a top-down
machinery for the mobilisation of foreign policy tools.66
Other research programmes in this rapprochement can be mentioned in passing. There
is “comparative political economy” that takes macro-sociological categories out of the
corporatism and welfare regime literature and analyses the adaptation processes of state-
63
So does Robert Cox, for instance, often refer to Carr. This is where one could put Ashley in his
Habermas inspired phase. (For a discussion of Ashley, see Ole Wæver, Tradition and Transgression in International Relations: A Post-Ashleyan Position (Copenhagen: Centre for Peace and Conflict Research. Working
Paper 24/1989) and explicitly also R.B.J. Walker with his re-apprehension of more historicist Realists and for
the closeness between ‘Neo-Weberian Realists’ and Critical Theory. See his “Realism, Change, and International Relations Theory,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 1 (1987), pp. 65-86 (71f.); and
“Ethics, Modernity and the Theory of International Relations,” p. 44.
64
For a discussion of more societal theories in IR/IPE, see Ronen Palan, “The Second Structuralist Theories of International Relations: A Research Note,” International Studies Notes, vol. 17, no. 3 (1992), pp. 22-29.
65
Stephen D. Krasner, Structural Conflict. The Third World Against Global Liberalism (Berkeley: The
University of California Press, 1985); M. Mastanduno, D.A. Lake and G.J. Ikenberry, “Toward a Realist
Theory of State Action”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33 (1989), pp. 457-474.
66
This refers to the entire dependency literature of the 1970s and 1980s. See for instance Peter Evans,
Dependent Development. The Alliance of Multinational, State and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); and “Foreign Capital and Third World State,” in S. Huntington and M. Wyner
(eds), Understanding Political Development (Boston, Toronto, 1987), pp. 319-352. See also the literature on
“bureaucratic authoritarianism” in Latin America which analyses the interplay between specific stages of
capitalist development and political regimes. See David Collier (ed.), The New Authoritarianism in Latin
America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
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Part II. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
society complexes within the global political economy.67 In a similar vein, but deriving
from Neomarxist approaches are the Gramscian School in IR and the Regulation School
that both try to research the articulation of political regimes in a specific phase of capitalist development.68 Finally, the study of revolutions as a specific interface of the internal/
external articulation, has taken an international turn.69 Weberian conceptualisations of the
state open up the study of IR for more enriching questions that problematise the origins
and dynamics of statehood (and state-building) in the international political economy.70
This IPE research programme redefines (international) political issues by means of
including societal processes and market structures. Consequently, power could be conceived to refer to structural processes. In Part III, we will see how concepts of structural
power refer to positional or non-intentional power when conceived from this research
programme and to the knowledge/power link when derived from the previous one.
4. Power Analysis: increased agency potential and diffusion of rule
Concepts like anarchy, international society, regimes, world capitalism, ecology are all
indices of an “international” that increasingly expands the potential fields of political
action, and yet reflect the impression, especially in the US and thus in IR, of a diminished
agent (=state) impact on world affairs.
New conceptualisations of power arise in particular within and between these two new
research fields of the interpretive tradition. In a sense, power is a common focus of all
these approaches and therefore possibly a privileged access to a renewed international
theory. Power held a central explanatory place both in Realist and Neorealist theory. After
all, since anarchy does not change, it is the shifting balance and configuration of power
that makes the analysis dynamic. Furthermore, it qualifies the anarchic international power
structure, as uni-, bi-, or multipolar. The aggregation of national powers explain specific
forms of rule under anarchy. As long as the basic logic of anarchy/sovereignty and the
fundamental state-based agency stays unchallenged, this works. Once both are contested,
international theory must start again to account for the locus of agency in international
affairs, and the exact link between actor’s capabilities (power) and international rule.
67
For some recent works, see W. Rand Smith, “International Economy and State Strategies. Recent Work
in Comparative Political Economy”, Comparative Politics, vol. 25, no. 3 (April 1993), pp. 351-372.
68
For the first, see Stephen Gill, Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993); for the second, see Bob Jessop’s work, as for instance, “Regulation theories in retrospect and prospect”, Economy and Society, vol. 19 (1990), pp. 153-216. In IR, see Marie-Claude
Smouts, “Some thoughts on international organizations and theories of regulation”, International Social
Science Journal, (vol. XLV, no. 4), no. 138 (November 1993), pp. 443-451.
69
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). See also
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974).
70
Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power. Vol. 1: A history of power from the beginning to A.D.
1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Fred Halliday (1987), “State and society in international relations”, in Michael Banks & Martin Shaw (eds), State and Society in International Relations (New
York, London et al.: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 191-209.
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3
Understanding the concept of power
This chapter prepares the ground for understanding why at this particular stage of world
affairs (both in academic and diplomatic practice), power conceptualisations may appear
especially appealing. In a context of both a potential rise in state control and actual
impression of power diffusion, the very content of “poltics” is openly contested. Arguing
for new concepts of power implies a redefinition of what counts as a political issue. This
chapter will introduce the assumptions on which the present conceptual analysis of power
has been conducted.
1. Assumptions of a conceptual analysis
The difficulty with “power” is that there is no consensus about how to study the concept,
not to speak of its meaning. There are two main schools in this regard. On the one hand,
a more philosophical approach aims at the determination of the meaning or meanings of
“power.” On the other hand, there is a more sociological approach which asks more about
the effects and the reasons for which such a concept is used. The one is concerned with
what it means, the other with what it does. The two approaches can be combined, but this
is not necessarily so. Let us start with the more philosophical approach.
Communication works smoothly as long as the meaning of a term is taken for granted.
This presupposes that there is for every point in time a relatively stable meaning of the
term. Conceptual analysis sets in when this understanding seems to produce misunderstandings. At this point, it tries to clarify the different meanings of a concept or groups
of concepts. Sometimes, the analysis aims at fixing the meaning. One way consists in
referring to a supposed essential meaning of the concept. This essentialist approach has
been widely disregarded today. Less ambitiously, some writers try to reconstruct a
descriptive meaning of the concept(s) to avoid incoherencies in its usage and misunderstandings. This reconstruction is meant to make the concepts useable for philoso-
35
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
36
Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
phical discourse.1 It aims at a possibly neutral reconstruction that can be used in different
explanatory theories. The result is often a series of taxonomic definitions.
A slightly different tack consists in presupposing a common core of the different
usages of the concept, without necessarily implying full-fledged taxonomic definitions and
without implying a necessarily neutral one, either. Steven Lukes uses therefore a
distinction taken from John Rawls, between a concept and its different conceptions.
What I propose to do instead is to offer a formal and abstract account of the concepts
of power and authority respectively which inhere within the many conceptions of power
and authority that have been used by particular thinkers within specific contexts, in
development from and in reaction to one another. Any given conception of power and
of authority (and of the relation between them) can be seen as an interpretation and
application of its concept.2
A term like “anarchy”, for instance, might mean in one context the “law of the jungle”,
in another “rule without government”, in another still “social organisation without
hierarchy”. Yet, to be able to refer to all as interpretation of anarchy presupposes a
common core. Otherwise, communication would not work. This core can be apprehended
also by making an analysis of meaning clusters. Assuming power to be a cluster concept,
the meaning of power is always to be assessed with its link to related concepts. Thus, any
analysis of power must locate the meaning within a net (or cluster) of related concepts.3
Also avoiding taxonomic approaches, Debnam proposes instead to define power through
a cluster of references or properties, none of which is in a strict sense essential, but whose
lack would seriously impair communication.4
Finally, there is a more coventionalist position where the meaning does not refer to
an abstract semantic positioning, or a formal definition, but is derived from the context.
This could refer to specific meaning contexts, as for instance academic disciplines, or the
wider shared system of meaning that underlies communication, the Lebenswelt of the
German hermeneutical tradition. Indeed, the variety of actual meanings of a concept is at
any time the sum of the meanings in those contexts it is used. Or, what means more or
less the same: there are a variety of concepts to which a particular word refers, that need
not to have any overlapping meaning. Conceptual analysis can therefore never be done
outside particular contexts.
This approach is often linked to a more sociological analysis of concepts. Here, the
question is not so much what exactly is meant by it, but what the concept achieves in
1
The best example of this approach is Felix E. Oppenheim, Political Concepts: A Reconstruction (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1981).
2
Steven Lukes, “Power and Authority”, in T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet (eds), A History of Sociological
Analysis (London: Heinemann, 1979), p. 634, original emphasis.
3
For an argument in favour of seeing power as a cluster concept, see William E. Connelly, The Terms
of Political Discourse, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1974), p. 14. In IR, see John C. Garnett, Commonsense and the Theory of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 113-117.
4
Geoffrey Debnam, The Analysis of Power. A Realist Approach (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 4.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
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Understanding the concept of power
37
communication, especially if the meaning is taken for granted. To give an example with
regard to power in IR. To use an argument evoking power or its distribution among
actors, has often the effect to close a debate. “The USSR had no other choice in the
1980s. They could not compete with the overwhelming US power.” Power arguments are
crucial in IR debates because the fundamental importance of power is so enshrined in our
thinking that an appeal to them can resolve a dispute.
The position taken here follows a mixture of the approaches just mentioned. I think
it is useful in scientific discourse to clarify particular meanings of concepts. Power is a
concept that many writers have found important for the elaboration of explanations. It is
considered an explanatory concept. If power repeatedly appears in explanations, it makes
sense to clearly identify its meanings and properties. But concomitantly, I will argue later
in this chapter that the significant meanings cannot be assessed without taking into
account the meta-theoretical and theoretical context in which concepts are used. This
implies that I do not think that we will find a neutral definition of a concept across
contexts.
The present conceptual analysis is, hence, interested in the use and meanings of power
for explanations in IR/IPE. This is a very specific context and does not necessarily entail
much for other contexts (although I think that it does so for social sciences’ academic
discourses, more generally). Within this historical and theoretical context, one can assume
a certain stability of meanings for the functioning of academic communication. Thus,
ordering the meanings of a concept in its contexts could leave space to an overarching
notion, albeit a very abstract and formal one, which the participants of the discipline
would take as descriptive. This is, however, not guaranteed. This core is as precarious as
the context’s boundaries are impermeable. Some contexts “discipline” their participants
in order to avoid exactly the problem of “meaning spill-overs” that would impede a coding and decoding following the rules shared therein. Academic disciplines are therefore
often more stable contexts. Their debates are rather more enclined to keep a core meaning
of a concept and to discipline its use.
This conceptual analysis is also interested in the purpose of power-explanations in
IR/IPE. Why do we need them? Why do we look for them? What do we want with them?
This last question has been often celebrated or neglected because it seemed to refer to the
ideological underpinnings and value-preferences of the researcher. I think that a more
sociological analysis of knowledge was useful at the behavioural and positivist heydays
in the social sciences (and is useful in those parts where this approach still holds). It was
useful because it reinserted the scientific production into its social context. It also
furthered the awareness of the theory-dependence of facts. By this is meant the phenomenon that theoretical preconceptions establish what is counted as a fact. Particular
empirical events can be accounted for by different, even incompatible explanations (or
theories). It is, however, unfortunate that the debate became linked to ideology. It spurred
the irritated reaction of those who defended an ideal of value-free science and who felt
offended by the claim that they were furthering particular interests, whether wittingly or
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
38
Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
not. Furthermore, claiming that ideological interests are at stake in cognition, meant a
form of relativism that was considered deadly for scientific work. As argued below,
concepts of power can have a variety of purposes, but it would be reductionist to tie them
to ideologies.
Even in academic disciplines, the meaning of a concept is, however, not always stable.
Indeed, there are some concepts which are relentlessly debated, probably even more than
in other contexts. Whereas some concepts have a taken-for-granted meaning which is only
rarely questioned and thus discussed, some concepts, such as “power”, seem unable to get
their meaning fixed. Especially in political science and in IR, “power” has shown a considerable resistance to being fitted into one stable meaning. Indeed, a basic characteristic
of IR is exactly the shaky consensus on one of its central concepts. It is widely used, and
the discipline reacts “as if…” the meaning was clear. Whenever there is a “breakdown”
in this taken-for-granted meaning, and questions arise about “what do you actually mean
by ‘power’…?”, it is like opening a Pandora’s Box. The practitioners of the discipline act
as if they were sharing a common code, and regularly realise that they do not.
Three main answers have been given to this problem. The first response consists in
pointing to an inherently ambivalent meaning of “power”. Another approach focuses on
the different purposes for which is used. These different purposes refer to different
contexts and require different power concepts, that cannot be subsumed under one general
formulation. Finally, the irreducibility of power concepts might be due to the fact that they
belong to the particular category of “essentially contested” concepts. The next three
sections will discuss them in turn.
2. The ambiguity of “power”
Starting from the everyday usages of power implies first a look at usual meanings of the
word. These are coded in the standard dictionnaries of the particular languages. In English
(but also in French or German, for instance), power refers to two different core meanings:
one is an ability, the other is a particular relationship. The first can be expressed through
the locution “having the power to”, whereas the second would refer to “having power
over”. Which of the two meanings should be emphasised is still debated.
Privileging the “power-over” reading is meant to stress the relational, and in
particular, positional aspects of power. In a first approximation, relational aspects imply
the fact that power is always both assessed and exercised in social relations and must
therefore take them into account. Positional aspects refer to the hierarchical distribution
of power in a given group or society. Therefore, those power analysts who preferred to
look at social power find the dispositional concept of “power-to” wanting. It does not
show if the exercise of power to achieve involves relationships in which some members
of the group exercise power over others.5 Indeed, the possibly conflictual nature of
5
William Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, pp. 101ff., 115.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Understanding the concept of power
39
exercises of power can be lost from view.6 In this reading, “power-over” is more inclusive than “power-to”, and thus to be preferred.
In contrast, Peter Morriss defends a dispositional concept of power as an ability.7 He
shows that often we use a concept of “power-to” without needing “power-over”. Indeed,
the attempt to rephrase power in the latter terms sound in several cases awkward and artifical. Further, he does not see why one would necessarily need a concept of power-over
to analyse the conflictual aspect of power. To do this, “we can easily look at someone’s
power to kick others around, or their power to win conflicts. Everything that needs to be
said about power can be said using the idea of the capacity to effect outcomes.”8
It seems true that one does not need a relational or positional concept of power describe conflictual social relations. There is, however, a difference in the focus and usage
of power in the two phrases. “Power-to” might focus on very particular, possibly single
power contests, where the overall hierarchy can be lost from view. “Having power-over”
asks why bargainings happen, and why not. Furthermore, a conceptualisation of “powerover” makes a difference not with regard to power’s conflictual nature too court, but
through the methodological shift to see power relations from the receiving side. “Powerover” implies repetitive, durable and inter-issue linked power relations. “Unless explicit
disclaimers are offered, use of the former locution implies that a bidder can draw on
several of these forms in conjunction…; it implies that the relationship is durable; and it
suggests that the matters with respect to which the bidder can or does limit the recipient
can be rather extensive and important.”9
It seems, therefore, reasonable to leave the question open. Power is an ambiguous
concept.10 Indeed, one could even argue that the exact link between the two basic
meanings of power is what the conceptual analysis of power has been mainly about.
3. Purposes of power
3.1. Peter Morriss’ three contexts
Peter Morriss’ first systematic study of the question: why do we need “power”? suggests
a second theoretical explanation for the never ending power-debates. In common language,
the term power seems to resound so significantly, that this question, although obvious for
other terms, has never been systematically explored. Indeed, Morriss suggests that power
6
7
8
This was the view of Steven Lukes at the time of Power: A Radical View, p. 31.
We will see later, that for studying power he refers, however, to a relational concept.
Peter Morriss, Power: A Philosophical Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), p.
34.
9
William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, p. 93.
For an argument to accept the duality of the concept of power, see Thomas E. Wartenberg, The Forms
of Power. From Domination to Transformation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 17-27.
Similarly, in his discussion of social power, Felix Oppenheim distinguishes between “exercising power” and
“having power” and endorses the ambiguity of power. See Felix Oppenheim, Political Concepts, chapter 2,
and p. 184.
10
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
40
Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
theoreticians generally concentrate on one of the different contexts, for which power
concepts are used, claiming this one to be the only one. Needless argument could be
avoided if the plurality of contexts were recognised in which “power” operates.
Morriss distinguishes the practical, the moral, and the evaluative contexts.11 In the
practical context, we are interested in power because we want to know what things we can
bring about. Agents want to know their powers in order to realise their opportunities.
Knowing their abilities, they might also decide which to enhance. People are also interested in power, because they want to know what other agents can bring about. If we want
to reach an outcome, and it is not in ours but in some other agent’s reach, this knowledge
could be the beginning of getting a deal done. The most important interest might perhaps
be to avoid being harmed by the effect of powers. Therefore, one has to know them.
We are interested in power, secondly, because through its assessment, moral responsibility can be avoided. “Ought” implies “can”. Accused persons need to show that they
could not bring about an action, or that they could not prevent it.
Finally, Morriss finds a third context, the evaluative one. Here people are interested
in concepts of power in order to judge not individuals, but social systems. The power
debate took largely place in this context. “What is wrong with being powerless is that you
are powerless — that is lacking in power. And if people are powerless because they live
in a certain sort of society — that is, they would have more power if the social
arrangements were changed — then that, itself, is a condemnation of that society.”
3.2. Power as an explanatory concept?
Most interesting are also the two contexts that Morriss discards. The theoretical concern
about power, that is, the interest in theorising about power, can be subsumed under other
contexts. For instance, the blueprints that policy analysis produces for the more effective
power management in the bureaucracy or other parts of the executive, are done within the
practical context. Assessments of political and social structures, as in the power debate in
political theory, are part of the evaluative context. The explanatory context, that is, the
attempt in academic discourse to make out of power a crucial term in producing (scientific) explanations is rejected outright by Morriss.12 Since this has been the purpose of
many power conceptualisations in IR, his arguments are worth pondering. But first we
need to consider those attempts at proposing such an approach. The attempt to make
power a central explanatory variable is particularly strong in the case of those writers who
see power as a concept which is related to causation. I will argue that there are two ways
in which power and cause have been linked. Some scholars have defined power as a
causal concept. Others conceive power as a mere disposition which can be used in rational
explanations where actions can contribte to a causal effect. But then, the causal weight in
the explanation must be shifted from power to the theory of action.
11
12
For the following, see Peter Morriss, Power, pp. 37-42.
For the following, see Peter Morriss, Power, pp. 42-45.
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Understanding the concept of power
41
“Power” as causation
Cause and power are considered similar, because they are employed to interpret situations
in which there is the possibility that some event will intervene to change the order of
other events. Power relations could, therefore, be redefined as a subset of causal relations:
“For the assertion ‘C has power over R,’ one can substitute the assertion, ‘C’s behavior
causes R’s behavior’.”13 One way to distinguish the subset fro the general set is the
criterion of intentionality. Hence, the definition shifts in favour of a causal relation
between C’s wants and R’s action: “Influence is a relation among actors such that the
wants, desires, preferences or intentions of one or more actors affect the actions, or
predispositions to act, of one or more other actors.”14
This does not entail that the powerful openly tries to influence other actors. The
important point is that, as in the distinction between having power and exercising
power15, the intention has been imputed and an actor’s behavior has changed accordingly.
The “rule of anticipated reaction” can thus be accomodated. In this case, R reacts to
imputed intentions of C without these necessarily being explicit. In addition to this, the
redefinition includes the “predisposition to act” in the definition of behaviour.16 The idea
of change is now not limited to a changed manifest action, but can also refer to changed
beliefs, which, however, for empirical approaches, must become manifest in an empirically
controllable way. Finally, the causal aspect of power should be seen as a form of probability, not of causation in a strict sense. Dahl also notes that it is impossible to apprehend
the whole chain of power (or causal) relations: the scholar will always need to focus on
a part of the chain, the focus being determined by his interest and theory.
Other scholars have developed on this idea of probabilistic causation. One of the best
presentations is certainly Oppenheim’s. For him, “to assert that R’s action x was influenced by some action y of P is not merely describe what R did, but also to provide at least
a partial explanation of P’s conduct. (Why did R do x? Because P influenced him to do
x).”17 The probabilistic causation of power is expressed in conditional sentences. The
different concepts of power can also be distinguished to the extent that action x is either
sufficient or necessary and sufficient for action y to happen or to be prevented. A possible
condition for the coercion of an actor B, is that actor A possesses a revolver and the skill
to use it. Acquiring both is not yet causing anything, and hence it is not an exercise of
power. If actor A points the revolver to actor B (action x), and the latter is induced (1)
to do an action which B did not thought of doing before, or (2) to refrain from an action
13
Robert A. Dahl, “Power”, in David L. Sills (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,
vol. 12 (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 410.
14
Robert A. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis. 3rd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 30. Dahl does
not distinguish between power and influence.
15
Robert A. Dahl, “Power”, p. 413.
16
Here Dahl is probably following probably following Jack H. Nagel, The Descriptive Analysis of Power
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975).
17
Felix E. Oppenheim, Political Concepts, p. 33.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
42
Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
B thought of doing (actions y), we have a causal nexus. Here, we have an exercise of
power. Action x is a sufficient condition for action y. If one can presume that there are
other ways to cause B to do y, this condition is not necessary for causing action y.
Tying power so close to concepts of causal interaction, is often accompanied by a critique of conceiving power as a mere ability. The choice of a causal concept, instead, has
often been motivated by the endeavour to avoid the power-as-resource fallacy, that is, to
impute power to the possession of resources and not to causal interaction. In the above
mentioned example, it is not the possession of a revolver which has a causal effect,
although it is the base for such an effect. There are different solutions to this problem.
Given power resources, one solution consists of tying the causal effect to the intention to
act, as done by Dahl. Here, one does not need to refer to actions as such, but can start the
causal chain from (imputed) intentions of A which affect the behaviour of B. For those
writers as Oppenheim who want to include non-intended effects into a causal power
analysis, this is not a reasonable strating point. Yet, in his discussion of this issue, he
comes nevertheless close to this position.
That the United States has power over Mexico’s foreign policy implies not merely that
the former is capable of, e.g., deterring or preventing the latter from joining the Soviet
bloc; it means that the United States has acquired and now possesses sufficient military
and economic resources so that, in the (very unlikely) event that Mexico attempted or
even merely contemplated joining the Soviet bloc, the United States would prevent or
deter Mexico from doing so.18
He rejects an ability-concept of power, because it cannot distinguish “between the power
an actor has and his ability to acquire (and exercise) it.”19 I think his example cannot
convincingly show his case. There is first the very definition of the concept not just as “an
ability to do” but as the “ability to exercise power”. Morriss’ discussion shows that such
a definition is not needed for dispositional concepts. Moreover, the example gives a very
rigid condition, namely that the US not only could, but would act. This cannot be derived
from Oppenheim’s definition of action. Since he uses a non-behavioural concept of action,
he accepts that mere dispositions can have an action effect and are thus to be counted as
such.20 In his example, however, he ties deterrence to an assumption of a necessarily
realised potential. In so doing, Oppenheim refers to an intention (to exercise power) that
he himself wanted to discard in order to leave his definition as descriptive (i.e. as neutral)
as possible. It is not obvious why the mere capacity to do something could not cause an
action. Indeed, Oppenheim’s attempt to link power to realised effect, could be seen as a
fallacy in itself, namely what Peter Morriss has called “the exercise fallacy”.21
18
19
20
21
Felix
Felix
Felix
Peter
E. Oppenheim, Political Concepts, p. 30.
E. Oppenheim, Political Concepts, p. 31.
E. Oppenheim, Political Concepts, p. 21.
Morriss, Power, pp. 15-18.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Understanding the concept of power
43
“Power” as explanatory variable
Avoiding the exercise fallacy has led several scholars to define power as a dispositional
concept. This does not entail that the causal nexus of power and effect is excluded. Yet,
it is not part of the definition of power. “So, power, as a dispositional concept, is neither
a thing (a resource or vehicle) nor an event (an exercise of power): it is a capacity.”22
Whereas in a causal approach power explains an outcome, here it is not a disposition like
power, but only actions which can be causally linked to outcomes. Actions can, in turn,
not be explained by power. Consequently, Morriss refuses any theoretical role for power.
He rightly claims that power is not a causal concept in a covering law model of explanation. I will argue, however, that rational choice approaches, for instance, can use power,
understood as a disposition, as one (among others) central variables in their explanations.
When Morriss criticises the theoretical context for using power, he defines explanation
in the naturalist sense. Theory-building refers, then, to the purposes of explaining past
events and predicting future ones. Positivist epistemology presupposes the same logic for
both undertakings. It proposes the method of the covering law. Morriss argues that power,
as a dispositional concept referring to a potential event, cannot “explain” in this sense.
Morriss gives two examples.23 A cup, which has the property of being fragile, falls
on the floor. It breaks. Morriss says that to explain the event by referring to the cup’s
dispositional property of fragility, seems unsatisfactory. For the reader/observer, however,
it is not clear what the event is. If the event to be explained is the breaking of the cup,
then the reference to the physical properties of the floor and the cup can, given the laws
of gravity, provide an explanation of the cup breaking up. After all, if the floor was
covered by a thick and plush carpet, some cups could be expected not to break. Yet, in
this situation, this breaking of the cup is not very puzzling. Thus the event is, rather, to
explain why a cup fell on a floor despite the existing knowledge that it would break. We
would look then for other reasons or causes. Either a draft pushed it (another cause), or
a Greek wanted to celebrate a wedding (reason), or it happened inadvertedly by a careless
gesture (another reason). In these last cases, the fragility of the cup does not explain the
event. But this is not linked to the impossibility to subsume the event under a causal or
rational explanation, but to the definition of the significant event.
The other example Morriss offers, is that if we are wondering why we keep seeing
black ravens, it does not explain the event if we are told that ravens are always black. But
here we are actually not explaining an event at all. We are giving a definitional statement.
If there is an event in his example, it is the wondering over the blackness of ravens. This
presupposes that the person who wondered could recognise ravens, but defined them with-
22
Peter Morriss, Power, p. 19. For a discussion of both the event and the vehicle fallacy in IR and IPE,
see Daniel Garst, “Thucydides and Neorealism”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1 (March 1989),
pp. 20-22.
23
Dispositional properties belonging to objects, not human abilities, provide the examples. A human
dispositional property is a disposition that, in contrast to abilities, cannot be influenced by (human) will, as
for instance, the disposition to hear and understand a language.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
44
Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
out a particular colour. To explain this event, one does indeed not refer to the blackness
of ravens. Again, it is the definition of the event which is important. Thus, it seems that
Morriss has not made a convincing case against the use of dispositional properties in a
covering model of explanation, but against their significance for understanding events.
How do his arguments apply for rational explanations referring to human abilities?
This is exactly where power is supposed to help in understanding/explaining, for instance,
world events. Morriss is concerned with the usual tautologies in power studies. Often,
power is deduced from its effects, and the same effects are “explained” by referrence to
the same powers. “The US won against Iraq, because it was more powerful” and “the US
is more powerful than Iraq, because it won against it.” To avoid this tautology is at the
very core of conceptualisations of power.
Although it may be perfectly satisfactory for practical purposes to infer power from
effects and effects from power without any independent access to either, it is scarcely
likely to be accepted as a legitimate procedure in sociological study. Indeed there must
be many circumstances where it will not do even in the less demanding context of
everyday life… Nonetheless, this circular reasoning should not be treated solely and
simply as weakness to be eradicated from our thinking. It is also an empirical social
phenomenon in its own right and its existence must be borne in mind. We cannot
dismiss the possibility that this circular reasoning and circular accounting is all there is
to power.24
In order to avoid this tautology, a dispositional concept of power referring to abilities, and
more generally potentials, must be distinguished from an analysis of the exercise of power
in which power together with other factors explain an event. If we recall the above
examples, we were interested in the acts, and not in the potential to effect an act. This
potential cannot itself explain the act; the meaningful reconstruction does. An assessment
of power will at least refer to the inventory of acts at the disposal of the agent (the
potential), the resources, the value that other agents attach to these resources in order to
know if there are really power resources, and the skills to use them.25 This assessment
of power is only one part, never a sufficient condition in an explanation/ understanding
of an event. Even the actual exercise of power refers only to outputs, not to outcomes.26
Therefore, I think Morriss is right when he argues that power as a disposition cannot
provide an explanation of a (social) event. He has not excluded “power” as a variable in
an explanation of social interactions. For instance, within a rational choice approach
24
Barry Barnes, The Nature of Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), p. 5.
In Power, chapter 19, Peter Morriss himself uses this account for the study of power based on resources.
The theory-dependence of the assessment of resources will be tackled later.
26
For this formulation, see Hubert M. Blalock jr., Power and Conflict. Toward a General Theory
(Newbury Park, London, New Dehli: Sage Publications, 1989), p. 28. For a similar argument to sever the link
between power and outcomes, see also James A. Caporaso and Stephan Haggard, Stephan, “Power in the
International Political Economy”, in Richard J. Stoll and Michael D. Ward (eds), Power in World Politics
(Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989), pp. 99-120.
25
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Understanding the concept of power
45
“power” can play a role in explanations, if it is supplemented by a theory of action.27
Keith M. Dowding proposes such a theory, in which it is “… the structure of the
individual choice situation that does most of the explanatory work. It is the set of
incentives facing individuals which structurally suggest behaviour to them; by studying
those incentives together with assumptions about the way actors make decisions we come
to understand why people act as they do.”28 The assumptions about individual behaviour
are rational choice assumptions of self-interested utility maximisation and (qualified)
rationality. Action is explained by reference to an actor’s desires (or wants), and her
beliefs. “Desires motivate whilst believe channels action. So an individual who desires z
will do y because of her beliefs x. The three go togther in a triangle of explanation and
given any two of the triumvirate the third may be predicted and thereby explained.”29
Power is the variable which tells what an individual could do. If individuals have a
particular desire and intend to act according to their beliefs, they must have this action at
their disposal. Power summarises the variable complex of basic acts, resources and skills.
As such, it is an explanatory variable. The causal nexus to the outcome is much weaker
than in causal definitions of power.30 We are sometimes interested in its assessment,
because power allows as to better anticipate the distribution of power which are part of
future events. This is, as Morriss rightly notes, part of the practical context.
4. Power as an “essentially contested” concept?
Besides the inherent ambivalence of the usage of power, and the irreducible multiplicity
of the purposes for which we use it, a third reason has been advanced to understand the
never ending disputes over the meaning of power. “Power” is said to belong to the special
category of “essentially contested” concepts for which no account can compel rational
assent. For this thesis, three reasons have been advanced: value-dependence of social
theories, the link of power with moral responsibility, and the theory-dependence of facts.
4.1. Value-dependence of “power”
The most often repeated reason is the value-dependence of social theories. If power is to
play a role in social theory, its definition and interpretations will be inevitably value-laden.
[I]ts very definition and any given use of it, once defined, are inextricably tied to a
given set of (probably unacknowledged) value-assumptions which predetermine the
range of the empirical application… Thus, any given way of conceiving of power (that
is, any given way of defining the concept of power) in relation to the understanding of
social life presupposes a criterion of significance, that is, an answer to the question
27
Keith M. Dowding, Rational Choice and Political Power (Hants: Edward Elgar, 1991), pp. 3-5.
Keith M. Dowding, Rational Choice and Political Power, p. 18 (originally entirely emphasised).
29
Keith M. Dowding, Rational Choice and Political Power, p. 23.
30
As we will see later, David Baldwin’s causal concept of power also carefully includes a variety of
conditions before power can be said to cause an outcome.
28
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
46
Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
’what makes A’s affecting B significant? … but also… any way of interpreting a given
concept of power, is likely to involve further particular and contestable judgements.31
Unfortunately, Lukes’ (and Connolly’s) argument was both too easily embraced and too
hastily rejected. On the one hand, value-dependence became quickly synonymous with
“ideological”. From here, it is only one step to analyse Lukes three dimensions as the
three expression of our well-known Anglo-American ideological triad.32 Being told that
academic enterprise is politics (although nobody ever said, “nothing but politics”), and
being offered this well-known menu for choice, another part of the discipline reacted with
contempt. Since the implication of this argument seemed to be a form of radical relativism, the argument was judged incoherent.33 Others argued that value-dependence is nothing which distinguishes power from other concepts in the social sciences. Thus, if the
evaluative character was meant to establish a particular category of concepts in the social
sciences, it is wrong. If it aims at describing a characteristic of all social science concepts,
it is not “enlightening”.34 Yet, the attempt to limit the issue to value-dependence is to
underrate some other important facets of Lukes and Connolly’s argument.
4.2. Power and moral responsibility
When we see the conceptual connection between the idea of
power and the idea of responsibility we can see more clearly why
those who exercise power are not eager to acknowledge the fact,
while those who take a critical perspective of existing social relationships are eager to attribute power to those in privileged positions. For to acknowledge power over others is to implicate oneself in responsibility for certain events and to put oneself in a position where justification for the limits placed on others is expected. To attribute power to another, then, is not simply to describe his role in some perfectly neutral sense, but is more like
accusing him of something, which is then to be denied or
justified.
William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, p. 97
(original emphasis).
31
Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 26; and Steven Lukes, “Power
and Structure”, in his Essays in Social Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp. 4, 5-6.
32
Andrew Cox, Paul Furlong, and Edward Page, Power in Capitalist Society: Theory, Explanations and
Cases (Brighton: Harvester Press/Wheatsheaf Books, 1985), p. 224.
33
For this position, see Felix E. Oppenheim, Political Concepts, p. 185. For a position, which reads like
a critique of essentially contested concepts, but which seems close to its precepts, see David A. Baldwin,
Paradoxes of Power (New York, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 8. “Without disputing the truth of this
argument in some ultimate sense, there is still a case to be made for attempts to explicate a concept of power
with as little ideological bias as possible. Just because perfect neutrality is impossible, it does not follow that
‘anything goes’.” This had never been disputed by Lukes or Connolly.
34
Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social
Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 89-90.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Understanding the concept of power
47
Whereas Morriss distinguishes between three different contexts, Connolly’s position seems
to imply that the moral context, albeit not always the primary one, is necessarily implied
when we use an idea of power. Morriss refuses this argument because we often do not refer to “power” for blaming individuals, but for evaluating societies. Furthermore, he says
that often we want to know power to be prepared for what others can do to us. I think that
this is right. But the argument to be discussed here is not about why we look for power,
as Morriss does, but why we call something a phenomenon of power, as Connolly and
Lukes do. This shifts the question: does it mean that assigning power asks for justifications, be they individual or collective? Is justification necessarily linked to responsibility?
At this point, their position comes close to seeing in the attribution of power an
“illocutionary speech act”.35 “Speech act” refers to the simple idea that we do something
when we speak. Sometimes uttering sentences give just facutal accounts. These statements
are called locutionnary speech acts. When we give an order or make a promise, for
instance, we do something by uttering a sentence. This is an illocutionary speech act.
Finally, a perlocutionnary speech act happens, when we use speech to have an impact on
the receiving agent. In short, there are three different acts: when we speak; we act by
speaking; to effect something through the fact that we act by speaking. The difference
between the last two is sometimes difficult to establish. Habermas argues for restricting
the perlocutionary act to all those situations where we want to effect something by hiding
it within the speech act. It is a form of teleological action which has effect only because
it is kept from view. Illocutionary acts, instead, must be open to have an effect. They have
an effect through the conventions that are attached to the acts. If we accept an order, or
register a promise, some conventional reactions can be expected.
Let us take the example of an order. Giving an order is an illocutionnary speech act.
But its aim might not necessarily be limited to the recognition of the order by the
receiving agent, but can be outside the context of the order. Spy stories are filled with
orders that are meant to be traps.
Here, I think Lukes and Connolly made a very important point. “Power” implies an
idea of counterfactuals, i.e. it could be also otherwise. The act of attributing power
redefines the borders of the “politics” in the sense of the “art of the possible”. Accepting
an attribution of power might result in particular actions. Lukes rightly noticed that
Bacharach’s and Baratz’ conceptualisation of power sought to redefine what counts as a
political issue. To be “political” means to be potentially changeable, i.e. not something
“natural”, “God-given”, but something on which agency could potentially have an
influence. (Operational) Power analysis, as all other assignments of power, is therefore a
35
For the following, see the discussion of Austin’s speech act theory in Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns. Band 1: Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung. 3rd rev. ed.
(Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981/85), pp. 388-397.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
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Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
power exercise or “political” itself.36 This does not mean that this political potential is
always taken up. Political acts can be without any significant effect.
Power, then, is a contestable concept, partly because of its conceptual connection to our
ideas about responsibility, and these concepts themselves form a part of our politics. For
to accept the criteria of power advanced by critics is to take a large step into the critical
perspective they articulate; and the same holds for the acceptance of criteria advanced
by apologists.37
To refer to power, hence, opens up a debate. In this debate, the claim that power was
involved must be justified. Justification implies an assessment about feasibility and
responsibility. When “power” is analysed through its attribution, it is “framed less from
the point of view of predicting the future behaviour of recipients than form a perspective
that enables participants and investigators to locate responsibility for the imposition of
limiting conditions by linking those conditions to the decisions people make, or could
make and don’t.”38
In a sense, verbalising “power” is hence redefining “political space” in all the three
different contexts established by Morriss. In the practical context, seeing power from the
recipient side tends to look for effects whose origins might have been unknown before.
We attribute power in the practical context to show that some harmful effects, to which
we are exposed, could be avoided. This could mean that nonintended or unforeseen effects
must now be justified as being unavoidable (or as being too costly to change, and so
forth).39 Here the issue of moral reponsibility is only potentially present. The moral and
evaluative context is evoked when the power wielders keep on exercising power and/or
preventing the better social arrangement from being realised. Thus, Lukes and Connolly
are not necessarily tying all critique to a question of individual blame. Their attempt to
find an empirical referent for power structures in some elites implies blame, exactly as
within Morriss’ approach, if they are preventing change. By looking at what power can
tell us about possible changes, Lukes and Connolly do not refer to incremental and/or
structural changes, but to those that can be realised by human initiative. Societies might
be criticised. The call for action must be, however, individualised, including collective
agents. Only then, when action is found wanting, is blame applied to individuals.
Nothing of the just said implies that attributing “power” is necessarily “radical” or
“progressive”. Redefining the boundaries of political issues, the “art of the possible”, just
means this. The only implication is a questioning of the status quo.
36
For a similar point, see John Hoffmann, State, Power and Democracy: Contentious Concepts in Practical Political Theory (Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), pp. 7-8.
37
William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, p. 98.
38
William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, p. 101.
39
In a similar vein, Daniel Frei notes that the concept of power is fundamentally identical with the
concept of “the political”; to include something as a factor of power in one’s calculus, means to “politicise”
it. See Daniel Frei, “Vom Mass der Macht”, Schweizer Monatshefte, vol. 49, no. 7 (1969), p. 647. This is one
of the purposes of Susan Strange’s ascription of structural power to the US (see Part III).
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Understanding the concept of power
49
4.3. Power and theory-dependence of facts
Morriss’ critique of the theoretical context
For Morriss it is not possible to assess a priori that there can be no rational solution to
a conceptual analysis of power. He thinks that two observers could assess perfectly
compatible power distributions, but would judge their normative impact differently. For
him, the concept of power is not essentially contested, but its necessarily multiple
significance depends on the perspectives, or contexts, of those using it. He gives an
example of a CIA agent, interested in power for practical purposes, who wants to know
how to intervene in society, whereas the democrat wants to evaluate society.
The CIA analyst and the democrat do not disagree about the distribution of power: they
have such different perspectives that they never reach the point of disagreement. More
subtly, the utilitarian celebrating the amount of power to satisfy wants is not disagreeing
with the romantic bemoaning the lack of power for self-development. What sort of
power we should concentrate on is not for me to say here: that depends on which of the
many competing perspectives we should adopt. And deciding that involves an exercise
of quite a different sort from the one that I have been engaging in this book. That
exercise is however helped no end by realizing that the different perspectives are not
fighting over a single concept of “power”: they are employing different concepts. When
we have worked out which concepts are appropriate to each perspective, then we are in
a position to start choosing between the perspectives. We can scarcely do this when we
don’t know what a key term in the perspective’s vocabulary is supposed to mean.40
In fact, his position is not that different from Lukes’. Both agree that the common
underlying idea of power is accompanied by a multitude of different power concepts.
When Lukes gives one concept but different conceptions, he presupposes that there is
something which is common to all and which can be assessed by rational, or as he calls
it “formal”, discourse. Consequently, his (re-)definition of power, namely “the capacity
to bring about consequences”, where “the affecting is seen as non-trivial or significant”41
is conspicuously close to Morriss’ “capacity to effect outcomes.” The difference is, then,
the inclusion of a criteria of “significance” already within the formal definition, which
Lukes spells out as “interest-furthering”. Yet, when Morriss analyses how to aggregate
powers to evaluate the overall power of an agent, it again sounds like Lukes’ account.
So having ascertained who has the power to do what; how do we reach an assessment
of overall power? Well, clearly the power to bring about some disastrous end cannot be
a valuable thing; it is only outcomes that are in some way worthwhile that need to be
considered. People are the more powerful the more important the results they can obtain
are; or, to put this another way, the more these results accord with their interests.
Conceptions of interests, then, play a crucial role in the aggregation of separate powers,
40
41
Peter Morriss, Power, p. 205.
Steven Lukes, “Power and Structure”, in his Essays in Social Theory, p. 4.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
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Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
not in the identification of power… A fully fledged theory of interests would be
necessary to perform such aggregations and comparisons; I don’t posess such a theory
but, luckily, I don’t need one to elucidate concepts of power. The result of this intrusion
of notions of interest into ascriptions of power is that it is more than likely that two
researchers with different views on how to weight the importance of various outcomes
will fail to agree on comparisons of power, even though they might agree completely
on who has the power to do what.42
In other words, the difference is mainly in wording, whereas the debate supposedly seemed to evolve around rationality and relativism. Morriss argues for a conceptual analysis
where concepts of power and their definitions are derived from (1) a common base in the
word “power”, and (2) its understanding through the three contexts and perspectives
derived from social theories.43 “It is (at best) quite senseless to argue about what the
concept is that a word refers to. In this book I have tried to show that we use the word
‘power’ to refer to a large number of different concepts, and that we do not get anywhere
by asking which of these concepts is the ‘concept of power’.”44 Morriss’ “word” and
“concepts”, become Lukes’ “concept” and “conceptions” respectively.
The real crux of the argument is another. Morriss tries to establish a conceptual
analysis which is formulated in such a way as to avoid at this conceptual stage the
necessary reference to social theories, although he admits that at the operational stage they
will produce irreducible power assessments. Thus, both agree that at this stage the
analysis, “power” cannot be assessed by rational argument.
Meta-theoretical dependence of concepts
This theory dependence of social facts suggests the third way to argue for essential
contestability. It points to the under-determination of social theory by evidence. Available
evidence may be compatible with a variety of different, or even incompatible, theories.
Contrary to the natural science, there exists, moreover, a mutual interaction between
observer and observed agents. Marxism is maybe the most noticeable case in point. Here
one could defend a form of essential contestability by the dependency of theory, empirical
and conceptual analyses, on meta-theoretical commitments. John Gray compares individualist (voluntarist) and structuralist (determinist) frameworks of explanation and concludes
that “since judgements about power and structure are theory-dependent operations,
actionists and structuralists will approach their common subject-matter — what goes on
in society — using divergent paradigms in such a fashion that incompatible explanations
42
43
44
Peter Morriss, Power, p. 89 (original emphasis).
The exact link between contexts and perspoectives is, however, not spelled out.
Peter Morriss, Power, p. 204.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Understanding the concept of power
51
(and descriptions) will be produced.”45 He argues that these are incommensurable views
of man and society which elude a rational choice.
Until now, there has not been a definition of power which would be neutral to these
two different meta-theoretical positions. For some, the basic individualist-intersubjectivist
divide is so great that it is merely sufficient to register that a “considerable distance
separates a notion of power understood as the exercise by A of power over B, contrary
to B’s preferences, and a notion of power as a multiplicity of practices for the promotion
and regulation of subjectivity.”46 I will try to exemplify this divide by comparing Oppenheim’s neutral definition of power with one that it cannot inlcude: Niklas Luhmann’s
conceptualisation of power.
Oppenheim’s definition of power refers to the causal relation between one action and
another. Oppenheim is careful to define action widely so as not to be caught in the
behaviouralist camp. He also avoids any reference to preferences, intentions, or interests,
that would make the definition contentious. He shows cases where none of them is
needed. His definition is so wide that he has been criticised to confound power with social
causation. Yet, he excludes explicitly all those situations “in which R’s behaviour, while
determined by the behavior of others, cannot be causally linked to the behavior of a
determinate person or group, but in which the causal chain must, at least for practical
purposes, stop at impersonal factors such as inflation, unemployment, overpopulation, lack
of resources—to take just a few calamitous examples.”47
A form of impersonal power is defined by Luhmann. In order to understand his definition, one needs, however, to refer to his social theory. I think that just giving its general
traits will make the unbridgeable difference visible.
Luhmann defines power as a symbolically generated medium of communication which
reduces complexity and allows calculus. Power is in the communication, not in action. It
is not causal, but it functions by attributing causality to a particularly steered communication.48 Let us explain this definition step by step.
Luhmann’s basic units are not agents and structures, but self-reproducing (or
autopoietic) systems, individual and social. Communication consists in the coupling of
systems where the “external” is included into the internal reproduction processes. This
process can be conditioned by particular media of communication. A medium of com-
45
John Gray, “Political Power, Social Theory, and Essential Contestability”, in David Miller and Larry
Siedentop (eds), The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 94. This should not be
confused with the two levels of analysis of an individualist approach, where “those who would base their measure of power on the quality and quantity of economic, political, or social resources available to an actor in
society are deemed structuralists, while those who measure power by the use of the resources to achieve
desired ends are considered behavioralists.” (Charles R. Spruill, Power Paradigms in the Social Sciences
(Lanham et al.: University Press of America, 1983), pp. 1-2.)
46
Peter Miller, Domination and Power (London, New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), p. 10.
47
Felix E. Oppenheim, Political Concepts, p. 32.
48
This is my synthetic statement of his approach. This and the following is not more abstract than
Luhmann’s approach itself.
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Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
munication is a code of generalised symbols that steer the transmission of inputs into the
respective selection processes of systems. Power is such a medium of communication.
Power in communication works as a catalyst for communicative interaction. In order
to avoid the uncertainty of selection processes, stabilised expectations are needed. Media
of communication develop specifically generated codes that fulfill this function.49 The
particular reason for the development of the medium “power” lies in those communicative
situations where both partners see alternatives whose realisation they want to avoid.50
Power is a code-steered communication which is present (and not only potential) in
communication, whenever a less worthy alternative has been chosen. Power as a medium
links up one combination of alternatives to be avoided with another less negatively judged
one. This transmittes the selections of action from the more to the less powerful.51
The medium achieves this by the means of two mechanisms. One are reductions.
Since the exact weighing of alternatives is not possible, communication develops substitutes for the medium (with the same function of stabilising expectations) that, in turn,
become a symbolically generated code of power. There substitutes are, for instance,
hierarchies (presupposing already a ranking) or history (attributing power through past
events). Linked to the latter are symbols of prestige/status and keeping up to significant
events. Finally, there are rules deriving from contracts. In all these cases the direct communicative recourse to power is replaced by a reference to symbols, that oblige normatively all parties and take account of the presupposed power ranking.52 The second
mechanism are rules to facilitate the calculus of alternatives, as for instance, the zero-sum
(or constant-sum) principle.53
At this point it might be good to synthesise the differences. Power is not in action,
but in communication. “Will” and motives, i.e. traditional attributes for the explanation
of action are not important for the assessment of action and for power. “Will” is not prior
to power, in the sense that power would overrule a preexisting will. In a code-steered
communication, expectations can be such that the will of an actor for a specific action
never arises. Will is neutralised by power, not broken. Power-steered communication
constitutes the will of one partner by attributing to his actions successes, expectations, and
respective motives. “Power does not instrumentalise an already present will, it constitutes
that will and can oblige it, bind it, make it absorb risks and uncertainties, can tempt it and
make it fail.”54 “Motives” are not an origin or cause of action. The communication
process, in the execution of power, attributes motives to systems. This allows the com-
49
Niklas Luhmann, Macht (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1975), pp. 12-13. His approach is, of course,
endebted to Talcott Parson’s social theory and concept of power. He adds the unexpected twist to conceive
the content of this code very much in Dahl’s terms, namely as an ascription of causality.
50
In a later text, Luhmann specifies that he thinks here about negative sanctions. See Niklas Luhmann,
Political Theory in the Welfare State (Berlin et al.: de Gruyter, 1990), p. 157.
51
Niklas Luhmann, Macht, pp. 22-23.
52
Niklas Luhmann, Macht, p. 10.
53
Niklas Luhmann, Macht, p. 52.
54
Niklas Luhmann, Macht, p. 21 (my translation).
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Understanding the concept of power
53
municative system to socially understand action. Motives are necessary not for action, but
for its understanding.55 In other words, “power” is a possibility that communication attributes to actors, as their capacity and characteristics, as much as “decisions” are attributed
to the process of selection.56 In a nutshell: Power does not cause an outcome, but
communicatively regulates the attribution of causality for understanding that outcome.57
Now, Oppenheim claims that his definition of power does not exclude particular ways
of conceiving a social theory. As Luhmann’s approach, his conceptual analysis is a
reconstruction which does not necessarily keep the meanings of ordinary language. It is
meant to provide social theory with a conceptual clarification. Indeed, since social sciences
lack a full-fledged theoretical system, academics are put before the choice either to leave
political concepts unexplicated or “explicating them independently of any theories with
the purpose of clarifying whatever isolated generalizations have been made or may be
asserted.” The task is the preparation of a conceptual scheme in which a theory in the
stronger sense will one day be developed, even if this might never happen. “Again, I have
no better justification than to point to the results of this study.”58
Luhmann’s concept of power cannot be accounted for by the conceptual frame that
Oppenheim prepared. It is a form of power which has an agent referent, but whose
causality does not derive from the agent, but from the communication process. Luhmann’s
holistic epistemology and system theory has no place for an action-concept of power, like
Oppenheim’s — except as a construction of the communication itself.
This does not mean that Oppenheim’s undertaking is useless. On the contrary, both
Morriss’ and Oppenheim’s conceptualisations are excellent clarifications that can be expanded in very different theoretical directions. These may be behavioural or not, empiricist
or not, rational choice or more widely intentionalist. They must be individualist
approaches. When confronted with theories and concepts that rely on completely different
meta-theoretical assumptions, they cannot include them. There, their effort must be
repeated.
5. Conclusion: Explanatory perspectivism
The present conceptual analysis of power applies to the meanings and purposes of
“power” in the particular context of the academic discourse in IR/IPE. It will be carried
out under the following assumptions. First, power seems to be an ambiguous word. The
attempts to reduce it to either of the two basic meaning-complexes, “power-to” and
“power-over”, have been unconvincing. Indeed, the link between these two seems to be
at the core of many conceptual analysis.
55
56
57
58
Niklas Luhmann, Macht, pp. 20-21.
Niklas Luhmann, Macht, pp. 25, 46.
Niklas Luhmann, Political Theory in the Welfare State, p. 157.
Felix E. Oppenheim, Political Concepts, pp. 188-189 (the quotes are from p. 189).
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Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
The drive for a univocal concept has meant that there have been few attempts to examine the relationship between the competing meanings which inhere in the compound
concept. Instead, in order to avoid a sense of linguistic ambiguity, there has been a
commitment to recasting the concept in onedimensional terms without ever exploring
if the sense of ambiguity at the linguistic level reflects a sense of ambiguity which is
lodged in reality.59
Second, the concept of power is used in three contexts, the practical, moral and evaluative
context. In scientific discourse, it is used as an explanatory variable which could be
subsumed under the practical context. Third, the attribution of power potentially opens a
debate about the “art of the possible”. It redefines the boundaries of what should be
counted as a political issue. The conceptual analyses of power, as far as they question
existing approaches, are therefore part of “politics” themselves. They are part of a selfreflection of politics. Finally, meta-theoretical rifts will be reflected on the conceptual
level. “Although social ontologies do not directly dictate the content of substantive
theories, they do have conceptual and methodological consequences for how theorists
approach those phenomena they seek to explain, and thus for the development of their
theories.”60 The meta-theory dependence of the concept of power entails that there is no
single concept of power applicable to every mode of explanation. This implies that a
limited range of views about power can be held that are both reasonable and yet different,
possibly incompatible. Concepts are not self-sufficient. They derive their meaning from
the meta-theoretical modes of explanation and particularly from the substantive theories
(as e.g. Realism) in which they are embedded.61 Power is significantly different if
conceived in a rational choice or intersubjective/structuralist approach.62 This insight,
which informs the whole of the following conceptual analysis, could be called explanatory
perspectivism.
It implies that concepts can be evaluated on the basis of their coherence within their
respective meta-theoretical and theoretical frameworks.63 It furthermore entails that, for
the purpose of this study, it makes no significant difference who is the particular reference
59
Richard Little, “Deconstructing the balance of power: two traditions of thought”, Review of International Studies, vol. 15, no. 2 (April 1989), p. 99.
60
Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, “Institutions and International Order”, in Ernst-Otto Czempiel
and James Rosenau (eds), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches for World Politics in the
1990s (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989), p. 55.
61
This is now acknowledged across rather different conceptualisations. See, for example, Barry Barnes,
The Nature of Power; Stewart Clegg, Frameworks of Power; Richard L. Merritt and Dina A. Zinnes, “Alternative Indexes of National Power”, in Richard J. Stoll and Michael D. Ward (eds), Power in World Politics
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publications, 1989), p. 27; Sik Hung Ng, The Social Psychology of Power
(London et al.: Academic Press, 1980), p. 1.
62
I use the word “structuralist” in the traditional sense of social theory, where it refers to a particular
category of theories that rely on holistic explanations. Waltz’ approach has been, unfortunately for the interdiciplinary debate, sometimes labeled structuralist. I will refer to Waltz as a neorealist or systemic Realist.
63
For a similar approach, see John Gray, “Political Power, Social Theory, and Essential Contestability”,
pp. 96-98; and Sarah Joseph, Political Theory and Power (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988).
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Understanding the concept of power
55
for power, provided the theory using power is constructed within the same mode of
explanation. For instance, rational choice approaches and the power concept they include
remain basically the same in the analysis of nuclear brinkmanship, organisational agendasetting, or personal threats. They also remain alike across the different spheres to which
they are applied, whether economic, social, financial, or others. Power is distinguished
through its role in explanatory frameworks, not through the fields to which it is applied.
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Part I. A conceptual analysis of power during the crisis of Realism
Conclusion to Part II
Since the crisis of Realism, the discipline of IR is looking for the definition of its subject
matter. On the one hand, with the emergence of the welfare state and the international
order of embedded liberalism, there was both an increased potential and a necessity for
state action and its international coordination. From here derive the development of international organisations and their studies, including the later regime analysis. With the
decline of the Cold War, more issue areas enter the “high” political sphere. On the other
hand, states see their control diminishing without necessarily losing it to anyone in
particular. Markets, “structures” seem to be in control of events. Processes at the domestic
level take part of a seemingly expanding “world politics”.
For their potential to “politicise” issues or to redefine political issues, debates about
concepts of power are typical of times of political redefinitions. Yet, power as a generic
reference does not mean very much. The “capacity to effect”, or “to bring about significant consequences” do not much distinguish “power” from “love”. Neither will other concepts, as, for instance, that “[power’s] widest meaning is”, looking from the power
bidder’s view, ”that of a potential for change”64 or, from the recipient’s one, the “ability
not to have to change, to adjust to change or to tolerate change.”65
Concepts of power derive their meaning from the meta-theoretical framework and the
substantial theories in which they are embedded. In political theory the debates have
moved away from behavioural theories to conceive power in a more diffused way; as, for
instance, to think “power without the King” (Foucault). This mobilised meta-theoretical
and theoretical debates. The extension of the “power-problematique” provoked a more
pluralist application of methods and the import of the philosophy of language.66 A distinction emerged between approaches that kept an individualist framework, and those attempts to overcome methodological inidividualism without falling into the trap of
determinism.
On the grounds of this distinction, Part III will analyse how concepts of “structural
power” tried to redraw the boundaries of “world politics”. They drew in particular on the
two main debates within the hermeneutical tradition that chapter two has introduced. The
first is the meeting point of Critical Theory with normative theory to redesign the
understanding of sovereignty; the second is a historicist Realist and Dependency
rapprochement to study state-society complexes within IPE. Some wanted to enlarge the
realm of politics in order to “reveal embedded power and authority structures, provoke
critical scrutiny of dominant discourses, empower marginalised populations and
64
Kenneth E. Boulding, Three Faces of Power (Newbury Park et al.: Sage Publications, 1989), p. 10.
John W. Burton, International Relations: A General Theory (London et al.: Cambridge University Press,
1965), p. 8.
66
Jean Greisch, “Le pouvoir des signes, les insignes du pouvoir. Notes sur la nouvelle question du
pouvoir”, in Jean Chatillon et al. (eds), Le Pouvoir (Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1978), pp. 180ff.
65
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Understanding the concept of power
57
perspectives, and provide a basis for alternative conceptualisations.”67 Others, in the
1980s, used power concepts to restrict the realm of politics. Indeed, Neorealism’s concept
of power can be shown to be the most limited in the debate — also with regard to the
already established power debate in IR. Part III will start with an introduction into this
traditional power analysis in IR.
67
Thomas J. Biersteker, “Critical Reflections on Post-Positivism in International Relations”, International
Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3 (September 1989), p. 264.
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Part III
Realist Power Analysis
and its Critics
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Table of Contents for Part III
Introduction to Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Chapter 4. The Inevitable “Struggle for Power” in Realist Explanations . . . . . . . . . . .
1. The Balance of Power as Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1. Power and Politics in Realism: The case of Morgenthau (64); 1.2. The
Redundancy of the Balance of Power (69)
2. Purposes and limits of power in the “Second debate” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. The Security Dilemma in the Behavioural Period (72); 2.2. The critique of power
as central explanatory variable (76)
3. Conclusion: The aims and limits of “power” in Realist explanations . . . . . . . . . . .
63
64
Chapter 5. Relational Power and Causal Analysis in Neorealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. The economistic approach to power in IR revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. David Baldwin’s concept and assessment of power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. Power - a causal and relational concept (86); 2.2. The counterfactual assessment
of power (90)
3. The assessment of power under different models of the international system . . . . . .
3.1. The international system: another continuum between Complex Interdependence
and Realism (93); 3.2. Economic rational choice as causal analysis (95)
4. Neorealist Power Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
82
83
86
Chapter 6. Structural Power: The Limits of Neorealist Power Analysis . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Beyond Neorealism? Meanings of structural power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1. Power as a relational concept: indirect institutional power as an update of
Neorealist power analysis (101); 1.2. Power as a dispositional concept: nonintentional
power and the limits of Neorealist power analysis (103); 1.3. Power as a structural/intersubjective concept: impersonal power (109)
2. A power analysis with a dyad of concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. Overload fallacies of structural power (115); 2.2. Power analysis between agent
power and impersonal governance (118); 2.3. Consequences for the study of power
phenomena in contemporary IR and IPE (121)
3. Conclusion: Purposes and meanings of power and governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
72
80
92
98
100
101
115
123
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Introduction to Part III
The twist of the argument presented here is to make a paradox work. Realists generally
believe that whatever one can say about their story, it is a story on power writ large.
Indeed, for some it is already enough to point to the undiminished importance of power
in international politics to defend Realism as the central approach.1
My contention is that by turning Neorealist, Realists are in fact restricting themselves
to a limited view of power. This point is not particular new. As chapter 4 will try to show,
many of the discussion that haunt power analysis in IR today, have already been raised
in the “Second Debate”. Despite these criticisms, Realism knew another forceful economistic turn in the 1980s. Again, the market analogy became the background against which
IR should be theorised.
But, as we have seen in Part II, Realism was no longer in a paradigmatic position. Its
Neorealist turn was heavily criticised. By doing this, the power debate in IR caught up
with political theory. All the stages of the “power debate” were replayed. In political
theory, we had a first criticism launched against some fallacies of the “ruling-elite model”
or “stratification theory”2 as, for instance, the infinite regress of hidden ’ruling elites’ or
the fallacy of seeing in power a constant-sum game. In IR/IPE, this stage can very well
be seen in the critique of dependency by Lall, Cohen, and Warren3 and in the paradigmatic exposition of the “pluralist” power approach to IR/IPE, presented in Keohane and
Nye’s Power and Interdependence.4 Although these critiques of dependency are made
with very different purposes in mind, they all emphasised the fact that all actors are exposed to asymmetrical and interdependent power relations. Henceforth, power needs to be
approached in an issue-specific and relational analysis. As we will see in chapter 5, David
Baldwin has provided the most encompassing conceptualisation of such a relational and
causal concept of power in IR.
Against such an approach, which consisted in the careful analysis of decision-making
procedures in key issue-areas, Bacharach & Baratz’s “second face of power” tried to
integrate notions like “non-decision-making.”5 This is the stage where first concepts of
structural power within IPE come in - elaborating, as we will see, on an original ambiguity in Bacharach and Baratz’s use of the concept. Their nondecision making can mean
both the inherent bias of any organisation that benefits some more than others (nondecisions as “structural bias”) and the conscious manipulation of the bias to affect outcomes
1
Michael P. Sullivan, Power in contemporary international politics (Columbia, S.C.: University of South
Carolina Press, 1990).
2
See for this so-called pluralist approach, e.g. Robert Dahl, “A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model”,
American Political Science Review, vol. 52 (1958), pp. 463-469, and Nelson W. Polsby, Community Power
and Political Theory, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963/1980).
3
See Sanjaya Lall, “Is ‘Dependence’ a useful concept in analysing underdevelopment?” World Development, vol. 3, no. 6 (November-December 1975), pp.799-810; Benjamin Cohen jr., The Question of Imperialism. The Political Economy of Dominance and Dependence (London et al.: Macmillan, 1973), and Bill
Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1980).
4
Power and Interdependence. World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little Brown, 1977).
5
Peter Bacharach and Morton Baratz, Power and Poverty. Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1970).
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in an advantageous way (nondecisions as “antedecisions”). Caporaso, and Gill & Law
stressed the first, Krasner focused on the second meaning.6
At the third stage, the idea of a structural bias is carried to its logical conclusion with
Lukes’ third dimension of power, which tries to capture the idea of “false consciousness”
within power analysis. Such “false consciousness” stands for the biased interest perception
of the actors which gives advantage to some of them, while avoiding the very awareness
of a conflict of interest. Power analysis centred on (decision-making-) conflicts cannot
account for the very power-intensive situations where no conflict of interests is apparent.7
This step can be compared to Gill and Law’s usage of hegemony and structural power
(stressing the impact of normative structures).
Finally, the necessary link of intentionality to power is challenged by views that stress
non-intentional effects of actions as well as by power conceptualisations such as those by
Bourdieu and Foucault where the empowering of agents (through power/knowledge) is
considered prior to intentionality in explanations. Susan Strange’s structural power recaptures the non-intentional effects of actions and poststructuralist writers, especially
Richard Ashley, have introduced Foucault and Bourdieu into IR/IPE power analysis.
As I will argue in chapter 6, these concepts of “structural power” have contributed to
a better understanding of power phenomena. Some of their meanings cannot, however, be
accounted for by the economic rational actor model which underlies Neorealism. In other
words, they invite scholars who take power seriously to leave the Neorealist approach.
Taking power seriously might lead Realists beyond Neorealism.
Part III will proceed in three steps. Chapter 4 presents the first critiques of Realist
power analysis during the Second Debate. Chapter 5 shows the way Neorealism conceives
of power and its analysis, before chapter 6 discusses its limits with reference to concepts
of structural power. Finally, a power analysis around a dyad of concepts, agent power and
impersonal governance is presented as a coherent way to account for the different
meanings of power in IR/IPE.
6
7
For the IR analysts, the following Part III will give the necessary references.
Steven Lukes, Power. A Radical Analysis.
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4
The Inevitable “Struggle for Power” in
Realist Explanations
International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.
Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is
always the immediate aim.
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 13.
For Realists, “power” is first a real world phenomenon, and then an analytical concept.
From the impalpable “fact of power politics”, the National Interest, defined in terms of
power, has to derive. There was no consensus, however, from where, in turn, the never
ending conflictuality of International Relations should be derived. The lowest common denominator, the inevitable “struggle for power”, has been attributed to different causes.
Some scholars rooted the struggle for power in objective laws of human nature. In this
account, war is the ultimate international spill-over of innate human drives. The phenomenon of power and the resulting (balance of) power politics are the inevitable background
for foreign policy formulations. Power is the key descriptive and explanatory term in the
theory. But critics have, as we will see, found the concept wanting; indeed, the “balance
of power” turned out to be a largely redundant concept in this framework of analysis.
When Realism increasingly turned into a social scientific discipline, the emphasis
shifted from the balance of power as an effect of universal laws of human nature, to the
balance of power as cause of the ubiquitous struggle for power. Not human nature, but
the conditions of survival in an environment of international anarchy cause the struggle
for power. This does not affect the central explanatory place of power in Realist theory.
“Power” defines the objective environment, the available policy means, and the immediate
end of foreign policy. The maximisation of power was finally likened to the maximisation
of wealth in economic theories. With a sole motive (survival), and a convertible means
(power), IR seemed predestined to imitate the admired success of economic sciences, not
only in rationally accounting for behaviour, but in actually establishing general laws.
63
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64
Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
Actual politics could be guided by a scientific raison d’État which consists in finding the
optimal means-ends relation for an actor in any particular situation.1
Yet, as some Classical Realists argued, “power” cannot play the central explanatory
role it was assigned to in scientific Realism. On the macro-level of analysis, the distribution of power does not determine behaviour. For the multiplicity of mutually irreducible
foreign policy goals, no unique rational behaviour, as the maximisation of power for
instance, can be assumed on the micro-level of analysis. International explanations can use
the concept of power, but power-theory is no shorthand for international explanations.
1. The Balance of Power as Theory
The duality of power as an empirical fact and as an analytical/political means informes
the traditional Realist power approaches. The very meaning of (international) politics
reflects this duality. When politics refers to the “art of the possible”, the conflictual and
power-based international realm identifies the “real” nature of international politics. At the
same time, power can be used as a means to limit the conflictual nature of this sphere.
Both politicians and statesmen struggle to devise stabilising and conflict-mitigating
strategies in a condition of international anarchy from which they know that conflict cannot be eradicated but, at best, only temporarily domesticated. “Power” refers both to the
limits and possibilities of diplomacy. “Power politics” is therefore only partly the cynical
view which is often imputed to Realists. This applies only to their assumptions about
politics. “Power politics” is also the only way to make a successful diplomacy. In their
blueprints of successful diplomacy, and these are no monopoly of so-called idealists,
Realists often include the long-term effects of power shifts. The result can be far away
from the kind of rapacious definition of the National Interest which is often implied when
we speak of Realpolitik. Bismarck wanted the legitimation of German unification, not
Alsace-Lorraine.
The paradigmatic statement for Realism is Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations. It
not only marked an entire generation of thinkers and politicians, but provided also an
ingenious synthesis of this basic duality. His solution has been (slightly) changed in the
behavioural period when the security dilemma or the “third image” became the major
organising principle for theoretical (not much for practical) Realism.
1.1. Power and Politics in Realism: The case of Morgenthau
The difficulty with Morgenthau’s concepts is that they have been so canonised, if not
“mummified”, that every intepretation which is based on his text must inevitably unravel
1
For a restatement of the raison d’État in a Realist tradition, see Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, “Zum
Selbstverständnis des neorealistischen Ansatzes”, in his edited Grundelemente der Weltpolitik. 3rd ed.
(München: Piper, 1977/86), p. 20. The term neorealism refers here to the “Munich School of Neorealism”
which is prior and slightly different from “Neorealism”, understood as the economistic turn of Realism in the
US since the late 1970s.
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more subtlety and miss the rather crude way it has been often used in the academic
debate. Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations was published when the Cold War had just
started. Unfortunately for the different shades of his thoughts and for Cold War politics,
only some features of his book gained prominence in the kind of simple-minded anticommunist containment policy which was the despair of more than one Realist,
Morgenthau included.2
The central stage of his book is “power politics”, or, better, the necessity of such a
politics. Knowing these necessary and immutable facts is the base for a rational foreign
policy. Hence, his approach can be summarised as a study of the tendencies and forces
of international politics (the objective background), which frame the range of possible
options in the attempt to limit conflict through self-regulatory mechanisms (balance of
power) and normative constraints (law, morality, and world public opinion). The study of
international politics should provide the analyst (and practitioner) with the ability to
ascertain the national interest which consists in maximising the instrumental rationality of
available means and possible ends, rather more in the long than the short run.
In this enterprise, the concept and reality of power enters at all stages. It defines the
objective background, the possible options, the most signficant means, and, in particular
circumstances, the ends of foreign policy, when power needs to balanced. Although it is
difficult to imagine how one phenomenon and concept could do all this, Morgenthau tied
together a theoretical package which seemed to work and did certainly appeal. It can be
synthesised in the following way (see also Figure 4.1).3
Power seemed so self-evident, and power politics so much the rule of international
relations, that the derivation of the key-concept “power” was only seldom done.
Morgenthau is one of the few writers who rooted and defined the concept of power. He
gives a universal anthropological foundation.4 He posits “three basic drives of all man”:
the drive to live, to propagate, and to dominate.5 In a world of scarce resources, their
aggregation must lead to a struggle for power. This is the nature of the “political”.
Realists define the political sphere by power and authority relations in which individuals, groups, and nations struggle for power in its double, effective and legitimate, form.
History is cyclical, and no catharsis can put an end to these permanent struggles.6
2
Thus, he does not endorse a view of the international realm as a purely Hobbesian state of nature. He
attackes Machiavellism. See Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace
(New York: Knopf, 1948), p. 169. On pp. 397-98, He attacks also Hobbes’ theory of Leviathan as a solution
to the state of nature.
3
For a being slightly more complete, the figure includes some more items, which are not all necessary
for the following argument.
4
This merit for having taken seriously the concept of power is also acknowledged by Morgenthau’s
critics, less the anthropological solution. See Ekkehart Krippendorff, Internationale Beziehungen als Wissenschaft. Einführung 2 (Frankfurt/Main, New York: Campus Verlag, 1977), pp. 36-37.
5
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 17.
6
For a good presentation of the characteristics of Political Realism, see Norberto Bobbio, “La teoria dello
stato e del potere”, in Pietro Rossi (ed.), Max Weber e l’analisi del mondo (Torino: Einaudi, 1981), p. 217.
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
Figure 4.1 A synthesis of Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations
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The inevitable “struggle for power” in Realist explanations
67
Morgenthau’s originality lies in the way he links up the anthropological foundation with
the international level.
A great problem for international theory has always been the conception of the unitary
national actor. Nations as such cannot be “seen”. Since Realists often embrace forms of
empiricism, this means that, as such, they cannot exist. Morgenthau consequently refers
to the state representatives and not to a collective, when he speaks about foreign policy
or national power. At the same time, the advent of mass societies (and mass armies) make
the calculus of national power increasingly wide. The mere reference to the policy elites
seems insufficient to account for it. To bridge the two, Morgenthau discusses the phenomenon of nationalism which papers over the gap between the larger population and the
state elite. Nationalism provides hence a fairly unitary actor.
The origins of nationalist solidarity with the foreign policy elite is, in turn, derived
from the struggle for power. He argues that on the national level, the state of law is able
to control the struggle for power — but not to eradicate it. The frustrated drive for power
is exported on the international level. “Not being able to find full satisfaction of their
desire for power within the national boundaries, the people project those unsatisfied
aspirations onto the international scene.”7 Indeed, the democratisation of national policies
exacerbates the power projections. In the context of the mass societies and nation states
of the twentieth century, the most dangerous phenomenon is exactly this, the universalisation of nationalist drives that are not respecting the shared codes of conduct of the
“Aristocratic International”. He calls it “nationalistic universalism”.8 Hence, Morgenthau
solves two problems in one: in the struggle for power, states can be treated as individuals,
without, however, the state being reified as a unitary actor.9
The struggle for power, now at the international level, opposes those who want to
keep and those who want to change the distribution of power. Before coming to the
balance of power as the main or universal instrument of international politics, we might
first have a look at Morgenthau’s concept of power. Power is causally defined, similar to
Dahl’s view, as A’s control over B’s actions.
Morgenthau is careful to distinguish between political and military power. Political
power is a psychological relation between two actors. In this relation, one actor controls
certain actions of another actor through influencing the latter’s mind. This influence may
be exerted through orders, threats. persuasion, or the combination of any of these. In
contrast, military power is not a psychological, but a physical relation. The existence of
a military power relationship is not supplementary to, but exclusive of, political power.10
He establishes a criteria for the choice of a concept of political power, namely “its
ability to explain a maximum of the phenomena which are conventionally considered to
7
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 74.
For the two concepts and their discussion, see Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, pp. 184ff.
9
At some points, he makes, however, the jump from the anthropological foundation to the unitary state.
See Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 327.
10
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, pp. 14f.
8
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
belong to a certain sphere of political activity.”11 This seems to leave a strong explanatory weight on power. But Morgenthau shows that power is a very elusive concept.
It cannot be measured. There are eight different bases of power: geography, natural
resources, industrial capacity, military preparedness, population, national character,
national morale, and thequality of diplomacy. Their assessment is vitiated by three main
fallacies. Power is relative and must be assessed in comparison with other national powers.
It is not permanent, because power bases change. Finally, there is no single factor from
which one could derive power, certainly not the military one.12 Morgenthau concludes
that “[r]ational calculation of the relative strength of several nations, which is the very
lifeblood of the balance of power, becomes a series of guesses the correctness of which
can be asserted only in retrospect.”13
The same judgment applies to the balance of power. Despite some passages we will
tackle later, and for which he has become famous and criticised, Morgenthau argues that
the balance of power is not mechanical, but emanates “from a number of elements,
intellectual and moral in nature.”
Of the temperatenes and undecisiveness of the political contests, from 1648 to the
Napoleonic Wars and then again form 1815 to 1914, the balance of power is not so
much the cause as the metaphorical and symbolic expression or, at best, the technique
of realization. Before the balance of power could impose its restraints upon the power
aspirations of nations through the mechanical interplay of opposing forces, the
competing nations had first to restrain themselves by accepting the system of the balance
of power as the common framework of their endeavors (…) Where such a consensus
no longer exists or has become weak and is no longer sure of itself, as in the period
starting with the partitions of Poland and ending with the Napoleonic Wars, the balance
of power is incapable of fulfilling its functions of international stability and national
independence.14
The book is devised to provide some thoughts on how normative arrangements, or
institutions as world public opinion, could function as a replacement for the declining
aristocratic code of conduct. Morgenthau reserves a role to norms and public control
which is far from insignificant; it is the necessary cultural (normative) force that enables
a balance of power system to work. If international politics has been democratised, the
new foreign policy elites must learn to follow the established roles. Since we cannot rely
on (aristocratic) tradition, we have to convince them rationally to adopt an understanding
of foreign policy that would reproduce the traditional diplomatic culture. This is the basic
tension between the analytical and the policy-oriented Morgenthau, a tension which is
11
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 13, fn. 1.
This does not mean that he does not privilege in the last resort military preparedness or war as the
ultimate bases and practices of international power politics. Yet, Morgenthau is also a foreign policy analyst;
and here the military factor is not necessarily the only, or even the most important, one.
13
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 152.
14
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, pp. 163, 164, 165.
12
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fundamental for many Realists. On the one hand, diplomatic culture is not the product of
rational deliberation, but of cultural and socio-historical tradition. On the other hand, the
diplomats must be rationally convinced to become part of this culture, because it is the
only one, for the Realists, that can assure at least some conflict limitation.15 This tension
is also what triggered the first critical reactions against his approach. The target was the
main explanatory variable, the balance of power.
1.2. The Redundancy of the Balance of Power
Morgenthau states that he is using the balance of power in four different meanings: (1)
as a policy aimed at a certain state of affairs, (2) as an actual state of affairs, (3) as an
approximately equal distribution of power, (4) as any distribution of power. This selfavowed ambiguous concept is, however, accompanied with rather far-reaching claims, as
born witness by the following quote
The aspiration for power on the part of several nations, each trying either to maintain
or overthrow the status quo, leads of necessity to a configuration that is called the
balance of power and to policies that aim at preserving it. We say “of necessity”
advisedly. For here again we are confronted with the basic misconception… that men
have a choice between power politics and its necessary outgrowth, the balance of power,
on the one hand and a different, better kind of international relations on the other… It
will be shown… that the international balance of power is only a particular manifestation of a general social principle to which all societies composed of a number of autonomous units owe the autonomy of their component parts; that the balance of power and
policies aiming at its preservation are not only inevitable but are an essentially
stabilizing factor in a society of sovereign nations…16
Here, the “necessary” balance of power appears suddenly as a kind of “political law”, or
even “universal law”, namely a self-regulatory mechanism.17 Therefore, some critics have
redrawn a fourfold typology of Morgenthau’s balance of power concept:
(1) a desriptive category: a situation (see Morgenthau 2-4);
(2) a prescriptive category: a prescriptive category (see Morgenthau 1);
(3) an analytical category: a self-regulatory mechanism;
15
In the following editions of the book, Morgenthau upgraded the last part. Many of the subtleties of his
discussion nonwithstanding, he introduced the account with six main principles of Political Realism, which
give the entire enterprise a more one-sided outlook. Now, the regularities of international relations and the
permanence of human nature were read as “necessities” to which all rational foreign policy, in the National
Interest, have to obey. Realism turned from a doctrine of historical experience and shared knowledge to a
social science theory which is “governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature.” See Hans
J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 3rd ed., Introduction.
16
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 125.
17
For these understandings, see respectively Ernst Haas, “The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept
or Propaganda”, World Politics, vol. V, no. 3 (July 1953), p. 467; Inis Claude jr., Power and International
Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), pp. 27ff.; and Martin Wight, “The Balance of Power”, in his
Power Politics, edited by Carsten Holbraad and Hedley Bull (Penguin: Harmandsworth/RIIA, 1979), p. 179.
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(4) an ideological category: symbol and propaganda.
The discussion here is concerned with the analytical potential of the balance of power.
There two questions have usually been raised. Is it really possible to speak about a “law”
of the balance of power? Which balance of power is “necessary”?
Leaving aside the truism that “any configuration of power distribution” is necessary,
Morgenthau claims to use the term in the meaning of equilibrium. This, following the
critiques, is patently false. The British “balance of power” policy in the nineteenth century
has aptly been described as “balance for the continent and power for Britain”. It was
British neutrality which could step in to deter a continental challenger by the tipping of
the balance strongly to the defender’s side. Only when Germany perceived herself strong
enough to match or overcome its opponents-plus-Britain, did the balancing policy not
work any more. A stalemate situation with an arbiter interested in the status quo is a better
description for this epoch than “equilibrium”.
“Balance of power” cannot mean a policy directed towards equilibrium, either. Since
the struggle for power is not limited at any given point, every power seeks superiority, not
equilibrium. Finally, it does not mean that balance of power is the necessary international
system for the management of peace and war, because Morgenthau himself quotes other
techniques (international law, diplomacy...). Therefore, in Inis Claude’s analysis,
Morgenthau cannot prove any necessity of the balance of power.18
This brings us back to a reformulation of the initial tension in Classical Realism,
namely the impossibility “to separate the balance of power as law, as something that
happens in politics, from the balance of power as policy, as something that politicians
make happen.”19 This tension suggests two answers to Claude’s critique.
One reaction could consist in the stressing of the intentional character of the balance
of power. The analysis would shift towards the concept of raison d’Etat. This alludes to
a policy of moderation which could effect a functioning balance of power system. Here,
the balance of power retains a certain value, but is far from being a universal law. Its
analytical content is rather void. It has become a description of the shiftings of power and
their coalitions, which is “synonymous with the state-system itself”.20 It adds, however,
a prescriptive idea for the reasonable statesmen to follow their intérêts bien entendus
(Albert Sorel). They should be moderate in their quest for power, “lest in trying for too
much”, they precipitate a self-defeating reaction of fear and hostility.21
The critique could be also countered by stepping up the “scientist” part. Here, the
balance would be the outgrowth of the always opposing forces of the status quo and its
revision. As a result, the balance of power is entirely synonymous with the “struggle for
18
For this argument, see Inis L. Claude jr., Power and International Relations, pp. 25-37. For a short
restatement, see Inis L. Claude, “The balance of power revisited”, Review of International Studies, vol. 15,
no. 2 (April 1989), pp. 77-85.
19
Martin Wight, “The Balance of Power”, p. 180.
20
Martin Wight, “The Balance of Power”, p. 179.
21
Inis L. Claude, Power and International Relations, p. 37.
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The inevitable “struggle for power” in Realist explanations
71
power”. For Morgenthau at least, this can be rooted in universal laws about human nature,
but it does not imply any idea of equilibrium or peace. It might mean peace and preponderance of the defenders of the status quo or war and equilibration through the revisionists.
The balance of power is, then, only “necessary”, because it is essentially a redundancy in
Morgenthau’s theory of international relations.
It is this last reading which is needed to understand Morgenthau, where he says that
“[t]his uncertainty of all power calculations not only makes the balance of power incapable of practical application, it leads also to its very negation in practice.”22 If the
balance of power were necessary, it could not be denied in practice. This signifies that,
given the international realm of anarchy, worst-case thinking and miscalculations will
inevitably produce the risk of preemptive wars and arms races. The scientific programme
starts here anew — with a shifting research question. Before, the balance of power appeared as the necessary outgrowth of human nature, but was found redundant because synonymous with the struggle for power. Now, the analysis turns to laws which are not the innate
drives of human nature, but under which the patterns of behaviour typical for self-securing
actors in qualified environments can be subsumed. Here, different constellations of the
struggle for power explain actors’ behaviour and the resulting dynamics of the international system. If the techniques of the social sciences succeeded in calculating power, one
could project rational policies which were conducive to realising a functioning balance of
power, understood as an equilibrium.23
2. Purposes and limits of power in the “Second debate”
In the scientific turn of the second debate, the emphasis shifted from the balance of power
as an effect of universal laws of human nature, to the balance of power as cause of the
ubiquitous struggle for power. Indeed, it is by taking the second reading as fundamental,
that the first approach to the the balance of power must be judged redundant. The balance
of power does not explain anything. It is itself explained by something else.
Yet if the scientific enterprise of IR is no longer a deduction from human nature for
the characterisation of a necessary form of world politics, but a deduction from the
different constellations and dis/equilibria of power, then the theory of Realism must be
rearticulated. During the 1950s, Realists attributed increasingly to the international realm
itself the cause of power politics. This reshuffled the different layers of Morgenthau’s
approach. It found its early formulation in the so-called “security dilemma”. The scientific
laws of the IR programme concerned the relationship between particular patterns of
22
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 155.
In a sophisticated version of this approach, Daniel Frei argues that peace is precarious because of the
lack of international consensus on the asessment of power. The search for the measure of power is therefore
an expression of the search for peace. In this context, political science should help to bring about such a
consensus, which does not necessarily mean an objective measure. Political science can enhance communicability by analysing and possibly by synthesising those phenomena that work as indicators of power. See
Daniel Frei, “Vom Mass der Macht”, Schweizer Monatshefte, vol. 49. no. 7 (1969), in particular pp. 646-654.
23
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
distributions of power and states’ behaviour. They were modelled often in analogy to the
“laws” of the economic market, as later explicitly done in Neorealism.
The scientific turn was strongly criticised at the time.24 With the accrued emphasis
on the international realm, its very definition has been scrutinised. The result was that
many scholars rejected a unique characterisation of the international realm as anarchic,
where the only difference from one system to the other would consist in the distribution
of power. Or, in other words, states’ behaviour is underdetermined by the distribution of
power. Raymond Aron attacked the very attempt to model IR on economic explanations.
Central to all these criticisms is the idea that the scientific turn attaches an explanatory
value to the concept of power, which the latter is unable to fulfill in IR.
2.1. The Security Dilemma in the Behavioural Period
The triumph of the third image
The anthropological foundation suffered from severe criticism. For once, behaviouralists
are not exactly happy with such vague and “metaphysical” terms as the innate power
instinct. Furthermore, the discipline of IR has always been riddled by an identity problem,
in particular in its Realist definition. The identity problem becomes obvious when we
think about Morgenthau’s definition of politics as the struggle for power. This posits a
similarity in kind, albeit not in degree, between domestic and international politics. For
him, the international realm is not a Hobbesian state of nature. This is necessarily so for
his foundation in human nature. But if domestic and international politics are alike, why
would we need a discipline of international relations? Two answers would have been
consonant to Morgenthau’s approach. One would consist in the education of an elite to
run the foreign policy of a country concordant with the experiences and traditions of the
diplomatic culture. The other one, necessary in times of the democratisation of foreign
policy, consists in the analytical frameworks which would provide diplomats not only with
the tools of their vocation, but with a scientific justification for the primacy of foreign
policy. One is inductive and historical, the other deductive and scientific. By looking at
the different societal background and recruitment traditions, one can partly understand why
the English School has stuck more to the first and the “American Social Science” more
to the second strategy.25
The foundation in human nature was replaced by a new approach constructed around
the “security dilemma”. Neither human nature, nor domestic spill-overs, but the
international system itself was driving this state of war.26 There we would have the best
24
In fact, many arguments about Neorealism and its critics are but a revival of this debate.
By this I do not only mean a possible preference for more scientist approaches in the US. It is rather
Stanley Hoffmann’s point about the perception by many European emigrants who populated the political
science departments, that the US was inadequately prepared for its new role as a superpower. A new elite had
to be formed, and quickly.
26
This refers, of course, to the famous triad in Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical
Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).
25
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of all possible worlds: (1) a scientific IR would not need not to rely on empirically
unsecure foundations about human nature, and (2) IR would become a distinct subject
matter, because its regularities were understood in a way different from domestic politics.
The solution was provided by what today would be called a collective action problem in
an environment charaterised by high uncertainty and risk. Objective laws might not
necessarily be based in human nature. But the balance of power, here understood as the
clash of powers, has “inevitable” effects:
Thus all politically active nations must be intent upon acquiring as much power as they
can, that is, among other things, upon being as well armed as they can. Nation A which
feels inferior in armaments to nation B must seek to become at least the equal of B and
if possible to surpass B. On the other hand, nation B must seek at least to keep its
advantage over A if not to increase it. Such are, as we have seen, the inevitable effects
of the balance of power in the field of armaments.27
In an international realm, that is characterised by “multiplicity” (Morgenthau) or by a form
of “anarchic society”28, one actor’s quest for security through power accumulation cannot
but exacerbate feelings of insecurity of another actor, who in turn, will respond by accumulating power. “Since none can feel entirely secure in a world of competing units, power
competition ensues, and the vicious circle of security and power accumulation is one.”29
In this account, the anthropological foundation is much less demanding: not an innate
drive for domination, but a drive for survival. Power politics is thus not an anthropological, but a social problem. It appears only when there is no stable normative setting. Here,
security cannot be entrusted in anyone other than one’s self. The context of anarchy, as
different from a functioning state of law, triggers the “inevitable” power politics.
International Theory as the systematic study of the distribution of power
From the point on, when the security dilemma became the fundament of (some) Realist
theorising, the main research programme of scientific Realism was the polarity(-stability)
debate. The basic question was (and sometimes still is), which distribution of power,
bipolar or multipolar, would produce higher stability. Thus, a causal relationship
represented the basic research problem of the discipline.
Behaviouralist IR tried to establish functioning laws of international systems which
are charaterised by different constellations of powers. The scientific aim is a partial theory
of international behaviour. Although one cannot predict individual events, it should be
possible to predict a patterned behaviour within a particular kind of international system.
At the same time, “the theory should be able to predict the conditions under which the
27
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 315.
This terms is from the original explicit articulation of this line of Realism. See John H. Herz (1950)
“Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma”, in his The Nation-State and the Crisis of World Politics:
Essays on International Politics in the Twentieth Century (New York: Mc Cay Co., 1976), p. 72.
29
John H. Herz, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma”, p. 73.
28
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
system will remain stable, and conditions under which it will be transformed, and the
kinds of transformations that may be expected to take place.”30
Kaplan is careful in stating the assumptions upon which such an approach depends.
He assumes that repeatable behaviour occurs in the international system and that these
international patterns of behaviour are related to the characteristics of the entities
participating in international politics and to the functions they perform.
Yet, when we come to the systems he describes, Morgenthau’s problem reemerge. On
the one hand, his systems are empirical extrapolations, i.e. they are not derived from a set
of variables. There are two systems that have been empirically realised, namely a
multipolar “balance of power” and a (loose) bipolar system. The other four, and later
eight, systems are, in turn, extrapolations of the dynamics of the two verified systems.31
On the other hand, the theory has predictive claims. Yet, with the hindsight of the
empirical strategy first mentioned, it does not provide the required hypotheses for causal
prediction. They are, in fact, rationalisation of why particular systems have proven
enduring, and not others. These rationalisations are done from the level of the main actors
(the powers in the systems), not from inherent qualities of the system.
Whereas Kaplan is primarily interested in the effect that the the distribution of power
has on the behaviour of individual states, the following polarity-debate asks about the
causal links between the distribution of power and stability/peace.32 Given the security
dilemma and the assumptions of self-interest of actors, Kaplan finds two systems which
correspond to stable equilibrium situations. These are the two empirically verified ones.
Given a historically contingent, but stable, system the research could consist in predicting
that rational actors would behave according to the rules. The hypotheses link causally the
distribution of power and the patterned behaviour of the actors. Although history is full
of accidents, he says, “a high correlation between the pattern of national behavior and the
essential rules of the international system would represent a confirmation of the
theory.”33 In a sense, the polarity debate depends on Kaplan’s findings. A rather
30
Morton A. Kaplan (1966), “Variants on Six Models of the International System”, in James Rosenau
(ed.), International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory (New York: Free Press,
1969), p. 292. This article is an expanded version of “Balance of Power, Bipolarity and Other Models of
International Systems”, American Political Science Review, vol. 51, no. 3 (1957), pp. 684-695.
31
This, as such, is no problem. It shows how the distribution can be used to describe different historical
international systems. See, in particular, Richard N. Rosecrance, Action and Reaction in World Politics.
International Systems in Perspective. 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Vrown, 1963/77).
32
For the classical texts of the polarity-stability debate, see Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Stability of a Bipolar
World”, Dædalus, vol. 43, no. 3 (1964), pp. 881-901; Karl W. Deutsch and J. David Singer, “Multipolar
Power Systems and International Stability”, World Politics, vol. XVI, no. 3 (1964), pp. 390-406; Richard
Rosecrance, “Bipolarity , Multipolarity and the Future”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 10. no. 3 (1966),
pp. 314-327. For an excellent discussion of this debate, see Jef Huysmans, “Discourse-Knowledge-Practice:
Reinterpreting the Polarity-Stability Debate” (Paper presented at the Inaugural Pan-European Conference of
International Relations, Heidelberg, 16-20 September 1992).
33
Morton A. Kaplan, “Variants on Six Models of the International System”, p. 293.
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mechanical causal link can only exist if the patterned behaviour of states under particular
order can be taken for granted.
Yet, Kaplan’s project cannot be verified in the way he suggests. If the rules of the
empirically verified systems are empirically extrapolated, and not deductively derived,
there might be many reasons why states behave as the rules would have it. They need not
have anything to do with the configuration of power and their functions. How does one
control for the fact that a diplomatic culture, that is norm-driven behaviour, makes the
system work, which is not necessarily linked to independently assessed rational action?
There might be cases of historical overdetermination, or cultural/social determination
which will be swiftly read as a corroboration of the theory, but which is purely spurious.
Hence, Kaplan at times comes close to a functionalist circle. Rational behaviour is
functional to the stability of the system and, since the latter is known, it is rational for the
actors. “The kind of equilibrium is not mechanical like the equilibrium of the seesaw,
which re-establishes itself mechanically after the disturbance. Indeed, it is a …
homeostatic equilibrium… The international system is not only stable but… ultrastable.
That is, it acts selectively toward states of its internal variables and rejects those which
lead to unstable states.”34 But how can he verify a theory of behaviour, if a patterned
behaviour is already assumed at the outset? When he finally moves to compare the
balance of power system with the market-analogy, the analytical circle is completed.
The “balance of power” system in its ideal form is a system in which any combination
of actors within alliances is possible so long as no alliance gains a marked preponderance in capabilities. The system tends to be maintained by the fact that even should any
nation to desire to become preponderant itself, it must, to protect its own interests, act
to prevent any other nation from accomplishing such an objective. Like Adam Smith’s
“unseen hand” of competition, the international system is policed informally by selfinterest, without the necessity of a political sub-system.35
In this analysis, the theory cannot be falsified by the patterned behaviour of the actors.
First, we establish historically which were the rules that stabilised the system. Then, we
make hypotheses as to why actors would follow them. Actors are assumed to be rational
utility maximisers. If they do not conform to the rules, then they either act irrationally,
or with wrong informations, and so on. Non-patterned behaviour will not falsify the
economic approach, which is assumed, but the rationality of the individual actors. Hence,
the research programme presages already the recent division of labour in IR: systemic
approaches tell us the rational story. If there are puzzles, foreign policy analysis will
explain them.
Hence, a scientific balance of power “theory” can be articulated. Given international
anarchy, basic behavioural patterns can be expected from roughly rational actors. They
34
Morton A. Kaplan, “Variants on Six Models of the International System”, p. 293.
Morton A. Kaplan, “Variants on Six Models of the International System”, p. 296. For an earlier analysis
of this analogy, see Ernst Haas, “The Balance of Power”, p. 455.
35
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
76
Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
will share the motive of survival, and the procedure of self-help. This is the constant part
of the analysis. Variables are the distribution of power, i.e. polarity. The explanandum is
stability/instability.36 Whereas Kaplan is more interested in the stability of the system as
such, the polarity debate often treated stability as low conflict or even peace.37 The
analysis is concerned with deducing propositions from the distribution of power that have
a particular impact on the rational calculus of the agents (powers, nations), which, in turn,
renders the system stable or not. We get a causal account of the following kind: “if there
is bipolarity (multipolarity), and given the micro-assumptions in an anarchical system, the
effect on the rational calculus of actors will be patterned so that a high probability of
stability (instability) results.” If it does not, the utilitarian model can explain it with
reference to faulty behaviour of the rational actor.
In this scientific operationalisation of the security dilemma, power is the major policy
aim, because it is still the key instrument for the provision of the permanently challenged
security. Furthermore, on the basis of the drive for survival (security) and the distribution
of power, scientific Realism tried to establish typologies and functional laws of international system. The removal of the drive for domination can be read as an attempt to
give the Realist struggle for power more scientifically accessible fundaments. In doing so,
the concept of power looses its ontological status, not its central explanatory role.
2.2. The critique of power as central explanatory variable
Power has a double role. At the macro-level of analysis, its distribution characterises the
particular international system which, in turn, explains some of the agent’s behaviour. At
the micro-level, it replaces “money” in the utilitarian economic theory or rational choice.
On both levels, the concept of power has been found not to meet the theoretical
requirements.
The underdetermination of the distribution of power
For Scientific Realists, anarchy and the resulting security dilemma are the basic characteristics for the articulation of their theory. More Classical Realists have criticised both.
The security dilemma has been repeatedly refined. This implies that structural
constraints are considered to vary independently or prior to the assessment of the
distribution of power. Kissinger, Aron and Wolfers present three different dichotomies.
36
For a discussion of the vague definition and narrow operationalisation of “stability”, see Patrick
McCarthy, “Stability of Evolution, Evolution of Stability: Towards an Understanding of the Meaning of
International Stability” (Florence: European University Institute, June Paper 1994), in particular pp. 33-40.
37
In this respect, Waltz’s recent restatement is coming closer to Kaplan’s initial formulation. Here, the
definition of stability is not twofold anymore, as in 1964. He drops “the peacefulness of adjustment” and
keeps the “durability of the system itself”. See Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International
Politics”, International Security, vol. 18, no. 2 (1993), p. 45.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
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The inevitable “struggle for power” in Realist explanations
77
They all express dissatisfaction with the attempt to subsume all international relations
under a power politics model.
Kissinger distinguishes between a legitimate and a revolutionary international order.
The difference between the two systems has nothing to do with polarity, but with the
existence of a shared code of conduct. “A legitimate order does not make conflicts
impossible, but limits their scope. Wars may occur, but they will be fought in the name
of the existing structure… Diplomacy in the classic sense, the adjustment of differences
through negotiation, is possible only in ‘legitimate’ international orders.” In contrast, a
“revolutionary” order always occurs, when one or more “powers” not only want adjustments within the system, as any revisionist actor, but an adjustment of the system itself.
But the distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that it feels threatened —
such feeling is inherent in the nature of international relations based on sovereign states
— but that nothing can reassure it. Only absolute security — the neutralization of the
opponent — is considered a sufficient guarantee, and thus the desire of one power for
absolute security means absolute insecurity for all the others… Diplomacy, the art of
restraining the exercise of power, cannot function in such an environment… And because in revolutionary situations the contending systems are less concerned with the
adjustment of differences than with the subversion of loyalties, diplomacy is replaced
either by war or by an armaments race.38
Within “the nature of international relations based on sovereign states” (without overarching authority), the feeling of insecurity and threat is considered inherent. Yet, only
some specific orders display these features, as, for instance, the US-Soviet Union relations
in the heyday of the Cold War. Others, as the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century
and the relations within the Common Market today are, in Aron’s words, a historical
compromise between the state of nature and rule of law.39
Aron himself uses a similar distinction between “système homogène” and “système
hétérogène”. Homogeneous systems are charaterised by states of a similar kind and that
share the same conception of politics. In contrast, heterogeneous systems are made up by
states that are organised accroding to different principles and that endorse contradictory
value-systems.40
Here Aron seems to imply a direct link between domestic and international policies.
For Kissinger, different social systems can agree to settle their interstate relations
following other rules than the domestic ones. This carries the public/private distinction of
liberal domestic policies into the international realm.41 In this distinction, everyone is
allowed to pursue her own faith in the private realm and everyone is protected against the
38
For the preceding quotes, see Henry A. Kissinger (1957) A World Restored: The Politics of
Conservatism in a Revolutionary Era (London: Victor Gollantz, 1977), pp. 1-3.
39
Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, p. 143.
40
Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, p. 108.
41
For this point, see also Part I, chapter 2.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
intrusion of the public realm: here, constitutional rights are equated with national
sovereignty. Aron discusses the link between the domestic organisation of the political
system and the nature of the resulting international system (this is the first part of his
definition of heterogeneous systems). Yet, if one contextualises the quote within the book,
then it ensues that different types of internal legitimation are no sufficient criterium for
the derivation of a heterogeneous system. Before 1917, the heterogeneity of principles of
(domestic) legitimacy was compatible with a profound cultural homogeneity of the
European powers. It did not necessarily induce them to upset the international system.42
Indeed, domestic heterogeneity is not even a necessary condition for a “revolutionary”
or “heterogeneous” order.43 The domestic system gives therefore only an indication of
the resulting international order. Unreconcilable contradictory values, as they are pursued
at the international level, seem to be the more important ingredient for the qualification
of an international order. As a consequence, the distinction can be used to differentiate the
international realm diachronically in different historical systems. It can also be synchronically applied to judge whether or not the “security dilemma” reigns in all subsystemic
relations.
Arnold Wolfers is very explicit with regard to the theoretical implications of such
distinctions. Wolfers himself distinguishes international orders according to a criterion of
enmity/amity. The result is a continuum from a pole of power to a pole of indifference.
One consequence of distinctions such as these is worth mentioning. They rob theory of
the determinate and predictive character that seemed to give the pure power hypothesis
its peculiar value. It can now no longer be said of the actual world, for example, that
a power vacuum cannot exist for any length of time; a vacuum surrounded by “satiated”
or “status quo” states would remain as it is unless its existence were to change the
character of these states and put them into the category of “imperialist”, “unsatiated”,
or “dynamic” states.44
The result is that the concept of national security, the political correspondent to economic
utility, cannot just be derived from the alleged necessities of international anarchy. At the
pole of indifference, where no amount of opportunity for successful attack could induce
a state to undertake it, “nothing could do more to undermine security… than to start
accumulating power of a kind that would provoke fear and countermoves.”45 If the utility
function is security, the national interest cannot be necessarily expressed in terms of
power. “After all that has been said little is left of the sweeping generalization that in
42
Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, p. 111.
Indeed, Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, p. 112, describes as perhaps the most
frightening heterogeneity the one which develops out of a basic community.
44
Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore and London:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), p. 86. At another point, Wolfers seems, however, to accept the
idea of an “automatism” in the tendency towards equilibrium. See p. 123. But this can coherently only apply
to the pole of power politics.
45
Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration:, p. 160.
43
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
The inevitable “struggle for power” in Realist explanations
79
actual practice nations, guided by their national security interest, tend to pursue a uniform
and therefore imitable policy of security.”46
The economics vs. the (historical) sociology of IR
The analogy with the neo-classical market-model is the basic thrust of the scientist
critique. Raymond Aron made a very explicit attempt to attack the approach by which the
national interest would replace utility in an economic function. Since I believe that many
of his arguments are still valid, I will develop them in some detail.
First, he considers “power” as too ambiguous an end to found an economic approach.
If power is treated as the main foreign policy goal which allows the rationalist articulation
of the theory, then the definition of power becomes crucial. Yet, Aron finds three different
definitions, none of which able to carry this explanatory weight. Neither “power-asresource”, nor “power-as-force”, i.e. of actually mobilised resources, nor finally “poweras-coercive capacity” can encompass or synthesise all foreign policy goals. Aron develops
instead a triad of foreign policy goals: power (puissance), security and glory/ideals.
Neither is it possible to reduce foreign policy behaviour to one of the three, nor is the
quest for power or security a behaviour which all diplomats should share. In view of the
plurality of foreign policy goals which can be subordinated rationally to more contingent
and various historical goals, the “national interest” cannot be “rationally” defined.
Certains théoriciens ont voulu trouver, pour les relations internationales, l’équivalent de
la fin rationelle du sport ou de l’économie. Un seul but, la victoire, s’écrie le général
naïf, oubliant que la victoire militaire donne toujours des satisfactions d’amour-propre,
mais non toujours des bénéfices politiques. Un seul impératif, l’intérêt national, proclame solennellement un théoricien, à peine moins naïf que le général, comme s’il suffisait d’accrocher l’adjectif national au concept d’intérêt pour rendre celui-ci univoque…,
faute d’objectif univoque de la conduite diplomatique, l’analyse rationelle des relations
internationales n’est pas en mesure de se développer en théorie globale.47
The second reason for which Aron refuses to use an economic approach to IR is again
linked to power as a central explanatory concept. Power is not as fungible as money.48
This implies that power within one issue area is not necessarily convertible in another. An
atomic threat might not necessarily be useful for inducing another state to sign a convention on environmental matters.
Aron admits, that economists cannot exactly know all the particular preferences of the
economic actors. Yet, they are able to reduce the multitude of preferences to one utility
function. They can do so because of the existence of money, the universal standard of
46
Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration:, p. 156.
Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, pp. 28-29.
48
The term “fungibility” refers to the idea of a moveable good that can be freely placed and replaced by
another of the same class. It connotates universal applicability or “convertibility” in contrast to context
specificity.
47
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
value and universal means for the acquisition of goods. Such a measure does not exist in
politics. This is not a difference in degree, but in kind. The underlying argument is that
there is an empirical difference between money and power which makes it impossible to
model political science explanations by substituting utility for national interest and money
for power. For Aron, the invention of money revolutionised real world economy and
allowed economists to model marginal economics. Only because there is a market
economy based on money can neo-classical economic theory be used. There is nothing
within (real world) politics which can take the place of money.
After this undermining of the micro foundations, Aron consequently dismisses any
“scientific” claim of the macro level, the balance of power. Since power is no unequivocal
foreign policy goal, it cannot stand for the basic drive to survive. The only notion of
“equilibrium” that Aron accepts, is the individual’s search not to be dependent on
others.49 Thus, there is no clear-cut behavioural pattern for international actors, because
this drive can be filled in many ways irreducible to one concept. The two conditions of
the distribution of power and the individual drive for survival are neither sufficient to
elaborate a model for the functioning and evolution of the international system.50
The possible theorisation is, therefore, limited to a framework of analysis that justifies
the focus and selection of certain variables considered significant and the apprehension
or understanding of a particular historical constellations of world politics.51
Consequently, Aron argues for an approach based on a Weberian historical sociology. He
attacks the particular attempt to reduce the theoretical study of IR to a rearticulation of
positivist (deductive-nomological) neo-classical economics. He does not, however, deny
its role (among others) in an intentionalist framework for understanding meaningful action.
Si la conduite diplomatique n’est jamais déterminé par le seul rapport de forces, si la
puissance n’est pas l’enjeu de la diplomatie comme l’utilité celle de l’économie, alors
la conclusion est légitime qu’il n’y a pas de théorie générale des relations internationales, comparable à la théorie générale de l’économie. La théorie que nous sommes en
train d’esquisser tend à analyser le sens de la conduite diplomatique, à dégager les notions fondamentales, à préciser les variables qu’il faut passer en revue pour comprendre
une constellation. Mais elle ne suggère pas une “diplomatie éternelle”, elle ne prétend
pas à la reconstruction d’un système clos.52
3. Conclusion: The aims and limits of “power” in Realist explanations
Compared with the ambitious theoretical programme, that scientific Realism reserved for
the concept of power, the precedent power debate has revealed a rather more limited role.
This is compatible with one side in Morgenthau’s original approach. It is also coherent
49
50
51
52
Raymond
Raymond
Raymond
Raymond
Aron,
Aron,
Aron,
Aron,
Paix
Paix
Paix
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et
et
et
et
guerre
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entre
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les
les
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les
nations,
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nations,
nations,
p.
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p.
154.
154.
140.
102.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
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The inevitable “struggle for power” in Realist explanations
81
with the English School of IR, which used the balance of power as one particular institution of “international society” which is neither characterised by universal dominion, nor
by universal anarchy. Martin Wight might be at times be read as to imply that the balance
of power is the logical outcome of an international system without government.53 For
Hedley Bull, there is no mechanism whereby states will automatically seek to prevent one
state from becoming preponderant. In the multitude of different policy aims, not all states
seek at all time to maximise their relative power position. A balance of power is
understood as the attempt to avoid hegemony, as a condition for the preservation of
international order.54 It is at best a maxim, not a law.
This notwithstanding, the concept of power or of balance of power has not ceased to
figure prominently in IR explanations. In fact, the debate pursued largely unchanged. The
balance of power was still used as a “theory” which assumes that the universal survival
motive, under the conditions of the balance of power in international anarchy, produces
a behaviour which is conducive to the reproduction of the balance of power.55
If conceptual and theoretical problems are crucial and not resolved, they can be
expected to regularly resurrect. The next chapters will show how they do. Let us just take
stock of all the puzzles and insufficiencies of power for a scientific explanation.
First, the international realm is not a form of pure anarchy, nor is it uniformally
characterised by the security dilemma. Hence the distribution of power cannot be causally
linked to actor’s behaviour. It is, instead, part of the context within which actor’s make
sense of the environment. When A increases in power, this does not mechanically or
causally induce a response, but is part of the interpretation that B will make of A’s
intentions. These intentions are important for understanding the response.
Second, power does not provide a shorthand for subsuming all the foreign policy
goals of a state. This includes those sentences where power is the necessary immediate,
or the ultimate, aim, or any other theoretical safeguard of the kind. If security is
understood in terms of power, the same applies to security. The pursuit of power is one
possible political action among others.
Third, power cannot take the place of money to allow for an economistic theorisation
of politics. This implies that the market-analogy is at best a metaphor. One cannot use
neo-classical economics, or a covering law model for political explanations, if power
should provide the basic explanatory concept.56 Power can be, however, part of an intentionalist account.
53
“And so long as the absence of international government means that powers are primarily occupied with
their survival, so long will they seek to maintain some kind of balance between them…” (Martin Wight, “The
Balance of Power”, p. 184.)
54
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977),
pp. 111-112.
55
Kenneth N. Waltz (1967) “International Structure, National Force, and the Balance of World Power”,
in James Rosenau (ed.), International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory (New
York: Free Press, 1969), p. 304.
56
Here, the argument joins the result of the conceptual disucussion in chapter 3.2.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
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5
Relational Power and Causal Analysis in Neorealism
As a reaction to the previously mentioned criticism, researchers in IR have either carefully
avoided the concept of power1 or tried to state specific power links and measure the
means more rigorously. It is in this context that we must see the two prominent conceptualisations of power in IR, that both use a choice-theoretical approach. This is done not
by Waltz, who leaves the concept unchanged, but by Baldwin, Keohane and Nye.
Hence, the present chapter is not primarily based on Waltz for understanding Neorealist power analysis. This is not done with the purpose of attaching possibly uncomfortable label to writers who do not conceive of themselves as Neorealists. To the contrary,
it is rather meant to honour the attempts to reformulate this elusive concept and to make
it useable for analysis. What all these approaches have in common, which justifies the use
of a common label “Neorealism”, is the systematic use of an economic mode of explanation in IR. This implies both (1) the Waltzian use of market theory and (2) the rational
actor model used in the game-theoretical approach and most prominently by Keohane and
Nye’s later research program. It is on this ground that insights from the traditional realist
and liberal traditions have been recently integrated.2
1
James Rosenau distinguishes between “capabilities” as a property concept, and “control” as actual
influence over outcomes. See his 1976 essay “Capabilities and Control in an Interdependent World,” in his
book The Study of Global Interdependence: Essays on the Transnationalization of World Affairs (London:
Frances Pinter, 1980), pp. 35-52.
2
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., “Power and Interdependence Revisited,” International
Organization, vol. 41, no. 4 (Autumn 1987), pp. 725-53. In particular see p. 729, wherein Keohane and Nye
explicitly subsume liberalism and realism under a rational actor model but with different conceptions of the
nature of environment and other actor’s goals. See also Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Neorealism and Neoliberalism”,
World Politics, vol. 40, no. 2 (January 1988), pp. 235-51; and, explicitly, Robert O. Keohane, “International
Institutions: Two Approaches”, in Robert Keohane (1987) International Institutions and State Power: Essays
in International Relations Theory (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 158-79. For the purpose of this
argument, only the neoinstitutionalist and regime approaches that use an economic mode of explanation can
be criticised accordingly.
82
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Relational power and Causal Analysis in Neorealism
83
Baldwin attempts systematically to import the findings of the power literature in
political theory into IR. Keohane and Nye explore the limits of traditional power analysis
in the context of transnationalisation. Even though Baldwin criticises their use of the
concept of interdependence, these two influential reworkings of the concept have many
crucial points in common. Both approaches take a choice-theoretical model as their
underlying methodological starting point. Both are aware of the above-mentioned tautology, which derives from defining power in terms of resources. Both stress the importance
of apprehending power resources only after a careful contextual analysis that Keohane and
Nye subsume under “asymmetrical interdependency”. Finally, both emphasise the need to
specify the context, that is, the issue areas (and possibly also regimes) from which
“vulnerability”, resources and thus potential power derive. For instance, military resources
are not necessarily useful when employed in a financial context. As a result, they propose
a choice-theoretical power analysis that focuses on specific “bargains” and the translation
process from unequally fungible agent resources, which derive from particular contexts
(interdependence), via strategic interaction to influence over outcomes. Whereas this
approach implicitly replies to some of Aron’s power puzzles, it still tries to uphold a
causal and economistic approach to IR explanations.3
1. The economistic approach to power in IR revisited
Kenneth N. Waltz has resurrected a scientific approach to IR in his Theory of International Politics.4 His solution is, in fact, the most radical. Not only is balance of power enshrined as a “theory”, indeed the only theory IR ever had, but the study of IR can delegate
domestic policies, foreign policy decision-making to another discipline, political science.
The discipline found its identity reaffirmed and its self-esteem bolstered.
His approach is called “structural” Realism, because his theory bulids up explanations
where variance at the systemic level, from bi- to multipolarity, for instance, is said to
explain unit-level behaviour. Waltz adopts neo-classical micro-economics as the theory on
which to model International Theory. Again, the balance of power explains unit-level
behaviour, or, at least, sets the range of possible or feasible actions. “Balance-of-power
theory is microtheory precisely in the economist’s sense. The system, like a market in
economics, is made by the actions and interactions of its units, and the theory is based on
assumptions about their behavior.”5
3
For good presentations of an economistic approach to power in political theory, which provide the
background of the following discussion with regard to IR, see Brian Barry (1975), “Power: An Economic
Analysis”, reprinted in Brian Barry, Democracy, Power, and Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 222269; Jean Baechler, Le Pouvoir Pur (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1978); Randall Bartlett, Economics and Power:
An Inquiry into Human Relations and Markets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Keith
M. Dowding, Rational Choice and Political Power.
4
Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Readings: Addison Wesley, 1979).
5
Kenneth N. Waltz (1979) “Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power”, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 117.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
84
Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
This implies the usual link between the drive for survival and the maximisation of
power — and all the problems mentioned in the last chapter. One of the major problems
for the assessment of the distribution of power lies in power’s lacking fungibility. If power
is not fungible between, say, the military, economic, and technological realm, how are we
to rank and assess “powers”?
Classical Realists knew about this problem, as well. If power is segmented, if the
relative importance of all these capacities is uncertain and changing, then the positioning
of power seems very approximative. After having acknowledged the problem of assessing
“over-all” power, Bull comes to an astonishing conclusion: “But the relative position of
states in terms of over-all power nevertheless makes itself apparent in bargaining among
states, and the conception of over-all power is one we cannot do without.”6
This is particularly true for all those who believe in the explanatory value of the
balance of power. But they cannot, like Bull, derive it just by saying that we can see it
and that we need it. The first answer comes close to the usual power tautologies, i.e. to
derive power from its effects: the one who wins in a bargain is the most powerful. Yet,
we need to asses power before the contest to make it a predictive tool. The second answer
is, of course, true, but irrelevant for an economistic explanation. Yet, it is exactly the same
as Waltz uses to confirm a overall-concept of power
A systemt theory requires one to define structures partly by the distribution of capabilities across units. States, because they are in a self-help system, have to use their combined capabilities in order to serve their interests. The economic, military, and other
capabilities of nations cannot be sectored and separately weighed.7
Raymond Aron’s attack on fungibility, at the time levelled against Kaplan, is now repeated against Waltz. Robert Keohane argues that the “power assumption” of Waltz’ Neorealism cannot hold. In a systemic theory, power resources are held to be homogeneous
and fungible, like money in economics, to allow for parsimonious predictions. This seems
hardly applicable on an overall-power structure. He, therefore, represents the idea of using
it within particular issue-areas.8 Attacked on the ground that power cannot, even if we
need it, provide such a measure for its lacking fungibility, Waltz says that
Obviously, power is not as fungible as money. Not much is. But power is much more
fungible than Keohane allows. As ever, the distinction between strong and weak states
is important. The stronger the state, the greater the variety of its capabilities. Power may
be only slightly fungible for weak states, but it is highly so for strong ones.9
6
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 114.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 131.
8
Robert O. Keohane (1983) “Theory of World Politics. Structural Realism and Beyond”, in Robert O.
Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 167, 184-86.
9
Kenneth N. Waltz, “A Response to my Critics”, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 333.
7
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This argument is not clear. If power is so fungible, then it can be assumed to be used in
different scopes. This is independent from the fact that the state is strong or weak. By
assuming a variety of capabilities (economic, political, and so on), Waltz seems rather to
imply that a strong state is strong, not because it has various sources of power, but
because is possesses many capabilities in most important scopes.10 This idea of over-all
power comes close to what Morriss has called “set of compossible actions”.11 Morriss’
idea is that “over-all power” consists in the set of actions that an actor can effect at one
point in time in different scopes. Of course, weak actors can win one contest by
concentrating all their power on one point. But the over-all power could be only understood by counterfactually asking how many contests could be won at the same time.
Yet, this over-all power does not rely on an assumption of fungibility. Indeed, it conceives generalised power rankings as something close to meaningless. One would need to
a have a measure for ranking different capabilities across scopes, as fungibility implies.12
More generally, this means, that after the assessment of the sets of compossible actions,
the comparison of over-all power is determined by the basic theory on which certain outcomes can be considered more important, than others.13 The consequence is that the
comparison of over-all power is dependent on a theory which attributes importance to
different scopes.
Hence for those who want to operationalise concepts of power, power analysis implies
the choice of one (middle-range) social theory rather than another. Aron choses a
Weberian approach, Waltz choses the economistic approach. In Waltz’ late response to
Aron, he reduces the power-money analogy to a problem of measurement, not of
theorisation.14 Despite the appearances, the debate is essentially about very different
assumptions of an individualist approach. If one assumes a rational choice framework, like
neo-classical economics, then the national interest is analogous to utility. In this case,
there must be an analogy between power and money, as incomplete as it may. Denying
this analogy would imply to give up the neo-classical mode of explanation. Thus, Waltz
must, in order to be internally coherent, assume that the power-money analogy is just a
problem of measurement. Aron argues that power does not empirically and cannot
theoretically play the same role as money. Indeed, he claims, to use rational choice
10
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politcs, p. 131.
Peter Morriss, Power, p. 88.
12
Robert A. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis, 3rd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976), pp. 29-35,
stresses that scope and domain cannot be rigorously weighted.
13
For a similar point, see David A. Baldwin, “Neoliberalism, Neorealism, and World Politics”, in David
A. Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 17.
14
Kenneth N. Waltz, “Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory”, Journal of International Affairs (London),
vol. 44 (Summer 1990), pp. 21-38. In the light of this explicit discussion of the money-power analogy, he
seems to imply an economistic theory of power maximisation. For a critique of this assumption, see Barry
Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 55.
11
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
terminology, that foreign policy aims are incommensurable in the real world.15 Here it
is certainly not just a question of measurement.
Therefore, Waltz has not improved on former power concepts or made a convincing
case for modelling IR theory on neo-classical economics. Indeed, he does not take much
issue with the power debate in IR. Here, in particular David A. Baldwin has tried to solve
some of the conceptual problems of IR power analysis. His studies stand out as the most
rigorous attempt to bring order into the use of power in IR. In many respects they are not
incompatible with Waltz. Indeed, as the following two sections try to argue, Baldwin,
Keohane and Nye provide a necessary corrective and improvement on Neorealism.
2. David Baldwin’s concept and assessment of power
… a single monolithic international “power structure”… implies
either highly fungible power resources or a single dominant issue
area… It is time to recognize that the notion of a single overall
international power structure unrelated to any particular issue-area
is based on a concept of power that is virtually meaningless.
David Baldwin, Paradoxes of Power, pp. 166-167.
2.1. Power - a causal and relational concept
Baldwin accepts a causal notion of power in which the “power wielder affects the behaviour, attitudes, beliefs, or propensity to act of another actors.”16 This implies a relatively
wide notion of “causally induced change” which is similar to Nagel’s and Oppenheim’s
approach.17 Baldwin uses a causal concept of power of to get rid of the well-known
tautologies that hamper power analysis in the social sciences. As for Morriss, an ability
or, as Baldwin calls it, potential power, implies already an assessment that potentially the
control of these resources can effect an action (Morriss), or causally affect someone else
(Baldwin). Causality is here used to distinguish between undertakings and outcomes.
Baldwin targets two tautologies. One cannot explain variations in the distribution of
potential power by variations in the distribution of resources, because the assessment of
resources as power resources implies already an assessment of their quality to influence
others. A non-tautological use would link variations in the resources with variations in
actual power, i.e. variations in actually affecting someone else.18 Similarly, it would be
a tautology to derive the affected outcome from variations in actual power. Indeed,
changes in actual power implies changes in outcomes. Therefore, those who say that an
influence attempt fails, cannot at the same time argue that this attempt relied on actual
15
Rational choice theory accepts indeterminacy based on incommensurability of alternative options as one
of those situations where it cannot be applied for explanatory purposes. See Jon Elster, Nuts and Bolts for the
Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 31-33.
16
David A. Baldwin, Paradoxes of Power (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 7.
17
See also David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985),
p. 9.
18
David A. Baldwin, “Interdependence and Power”, in Paradoxes of Power, p. 207.
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power. Baldwin follows Lasswell and Kaplan to the extent that a power base “refers to
the causal condition that gives influence its effectiveness. Thus, by definition, ineffective
influence attempts cannot employ ‘influence bases’.”19
The description of policy options and the description of the causal condition(s) of
success are best kept separate if one wants to understand how techniques of statecraft
work. In sum, policy instruments used to make influence attempts should be described
in ways that imply nothing whatever about either the probability of success or the causal
condition of success. Trying is one thing; succeeding is another.20
Whereas power refers to the causal conditions for a successful influence attempt (outcome), policy instruments (resources in the general sense) refer to non-causal conditions
for an action of undetermined nature; it could be an influence attempt, which can have a
causal effect.
This is a different solution to the circularity problem of power-outcomes, that we have
already met. Those who stick to a dispositional concept of power, where causality is not
part of the definition, make a link between power and outputs, not outcomes. Indeterminacy comes at the level of social interaction. Baldwin, to the contrary, keeps a causal
concept of power, but includes a variety of social factors in the assessment of actual
power. Here, the link between power and outcome is causal, but the assessment of power
is indeterminate. Whereas a dispositional conceptualisation can wait for the relational
character of power resources to be included at the operational level, Baldwin, given his
causal approach, needs to include the relational character already in the definition.
Baldwin strongly defends a relational approach to the analysis of power.21 In this
approach, a power base or power resource cannot be assessed by sole reference to the
power holder. Baldwin’s example is a coercive attempt in which a person threatens
another with a gun and shouts “your money or your life”. The sanction of killing and the
visible means for realising it generally provide a powerful threat. Yet, if the threatened
person is preparing to commit suicide, or does not value life so highly, the coercive
capacity of the threat is reduced accordingly. Awareness of this relational aspect can also
be consciously used as a defense against threats. President Harry Truman tried to impress
President Joseph Stalin in Potsdam in 1945 by telling him that the United States had
developed an atomic bomb. Stalin, however, by feigning indifference, reduced the impact
of this possible bargaining chip. Thus, any power instrument becomes a potential power
19
David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 23.
David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 24.
21
This should not be confounded with a “relative” concept of power. For this confusion, see William B.
Moul, “Measuring the ‘balances of power’: a look at some numbers”, Review of International Studies, vol.
15, no. 2 (April 1989), p. 102. Although carefully arguing for a disaggregated concept of power, the same
confusion is found in Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy, p. 68.
20
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resource only if its control is valued by other actors in the interaction. Power comes out
of this relation, not from the power holder alone.22
For the relational approach to power, Baldwin refuses a complete money-power
analogy where power is simply treated as a resource to be exchanged in an interaction for
actual influence. The rejection of this analogy marks the three major elements of
Baldwin’s power analysis: the concept of fungibility, the multidimensional character of
power, and the prior relational analysis of specific policy-contingency frameworks.23
The high fungibility of money rests upon two main characteristics: first, its high
liquidity as a medium of exchange based and dependent on, second, its function as a
standard of value.24 Yet, for Baldwin:
The owner of a political power resource, such as the means to deter atomic attack, is
likely to have difficulties converting this resource into another resource that would, for
instance, allow his country to become the leader of the Third World. Whereas money
facilitates the exchange of one economic resource for another, there is no standardised
measure of value that serves as medium of exchange for political power resources.25
At the same time power is multidimensional, i.e. its scope (the objectives of an attempt
to gain influence, the issue over which influence is to be gained), its domain (the target
of the influence attempt), its weight (the quantity of resources) and its cost (opportunity
costs of forgoing a relation) must be made explicit.26 Without these qualifications, any
statement about power is, for Baldwin, close to meaningless. Another consequence of low
fungibility is that power can rest on various bases, and no single power base (military
resources, for instance) can be held a priori to be the most decisive in any attempt to exert
influence.
This multidimensional character leads us to the last characteristic of any power
approach in Baldwin’s terms: the specification of the situation, that is, the policy-contingency framework.27 At this point, the inextricable link between the economic approach’s
22
For this particular point, see David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 22; and his 1980 essay
“Interdependence and Power”, in Paradoxes of Power, p. 207.
23
The term “fungibility” refers to the idea of movable goods that can be freely placed and replaced by
another of the same class. It connotes universal applicability or “convertibility” in contrast to context
specificity.
24
David A. Baldwin, Paradoxes of Power, pp. 25, 209. For a similar argument, see Arnold Wolfers,
Discord and Collaboration, p. 106.
25
David A. Baldwin, “Power Analysis and World Politics”, in Paradoxes of Power, p. 134.
26
The inclusion of opportunity costs is a result of Baldwin’s reception of the social exchange literature.
For an early statement, see David A. Baldwin (1971) “The Costs of Power”, in Paradoxes of Power, p. 83.
27
For a very similar approach, that starts out with the intention to retain a dispositional concept of power
(an ability), but by acknowledging the question of fungibility ends up with integrating specific relations and
contexts into the account of power bases, see Kjell Goldmann, “The International Power Structure: Traditional
Theory and New Reality”, in Kjell Goldmann and Gunnar Sjöstedt (eds), Power, Capabilities, Interdependence. Problems in the Study of International Influence (London and Beverly Hills: Sage Publications), pp.
7-36.
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two levels can be shown. For the agent, this policy-contingency framework corresponds
to the structural level of an economic approach. Only by analysing the particular market
on which (economic) actors meet is a precise assessment of the interaction possible.28
On the other hand, agents’ behaviour in the long run shapes the underlying structure that
constrains future actions.
In other words, a relational concept of power requires necessarily a prior contextual
analysis.29 This contextual analysis includes also an assessment of societal norms. This
results from the fact that exchange is possible not only in money economies, but also in
situations of barter. Therefore, the analogy of barter exchange and power relations is
theoretically possible.30 Barter, in turn, can work because “societal norms function as
primitive measuring rods that make indirect social exchange possible.”31
The resulting power analysis starts from the assessment of resources or policy instruments. Since high fungibility cannot be assumed, potential power (within particular
scopes) can only be assessed after a situational analysis which specifies the different
dimensions of the context. This potential power might, for lack of will or desire, not be
translated into actual power.32 Only this actual power is causally linked to the explanation of the outcome (see Figure 4.2). Since norms are necessary to assess power, it is
implicit in this approach that a power attempt can be directly affecting the outcome, or
indirectly affecting the context to affect the outcome. These are the two main targets for
influence attempts and for power-based policy analysis. Yet, to do such an analysis, the
concept of power must be supplemented by a theoretical framework. Neorealism uses
theoretical frameworks inspired by neo-classical economic theory.
2.2. The counterfactual assessment of power
Baldwin seems inclined to accept the positivist standards for research generally linked to
behavioural approaches. He quotes empirical tests and falsification as a standard for
scientific inquiry.33 At the same time, he stresses the need of counterfactual conditions
which are not easily handled by empiricist approaches.34 Counterfactual reasoning is
necessarily theoretical. Theoretical hypothesis or frameworks of analysis will provide the
28
As we will elaborate in the next section, Baldwin’s multidimensional context rather resembles Keohane
and Nye’s issue areas or regimes, than the general Waltzian structure.
29
See, for instance, David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 285.
30
See also Roderick Martin, The Sociology of Power (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 29.
31
David A. Baldwin, “Power and Social Exchange”, in Paradoxes of Power, p. 125. That societal norms
are necessary to make barter/power work, means that the effect of power is socially constructed. This
argument will be taken up in the next chapter.
32
David A. Baldwin, “Interdependence and Power”, in Paradoxes of Power, pp. 203-204.
33
He defends Sir Norman Angell for advancing an empirically testable proposition, which might not be
true, but is, in principle, falsifiable. He also dismisses dependency approaches for their partial precluding of
empirical investigation. See David A. Baldwin, “Interdependence and Power”, in Paradoxes of Power, p. 185,
and p. 213, fn. 136.
34
David A. Baldwin, “Interdependence and Power”, in Paradoxes of Power, p. 212.
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Figure 4.2 An analytical model of David Baldwin’s relational power analysis
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step from the definition to the assessment of power.
Two examples can serve to illustrate the point, namely Baldwin’s discussions of the
Peloponnesian War and the US embargo against Japan before Pearl Harbour. Here, these
counterfactuals become extremely important for the judgement of the success of influence
attempts, i.e. for the empirical analysis of power relations.
Deterrence via economic sanctions did not work during the Peloponnesian War.
“Although Pericles’s action failed to deter war, the probability of war was fairly great to
begin with; and perhaps nothing he could have done would have avoided it. Given the
tense and complex situation, the imposition of economic sanctions may well have been
the policy option with the highest probability of success.”35 Similarly, the probability of
war is crucial for assessing the success of the US embargo against Japan. “If it is estimated as low, then the argument that an embargo was an unnecessarily provocative act carries
more weight; but if it is estimated as high, the embargo seems more attractive…”36
In this context, a theory of the behaviour of states becomes necessary, before one is
able to judge influence attempts. If, for example, one relies on Kagan’s interpretation of
Thukydides, that “war was inevitable from the time Athens became an imperial power”,37
then the traditional Realist dictum of the inevitability of conflict as a result of shifts in the
balance of power becomes the logic on which counterfactuals are build.
The theoretical assumptions of the writer becomes the base or the logical thrust for
expectations and probabilities with which actual behaviour will be compared. This,
however, is exactly what Pluralists had criticised in the power studies of “stratification
theory”. Hence, Baldwin seems less empiricist than the classical Pluralist approach:
Power analysis always requires consideration of counterfactual conditions. If power
relations involve some people getting other people to do something they would not
otherwise do, the question of what would otherwise have been done cannot be ignored…
Such discussion may amount to little more than “educated guesses”, but this is
preferable to ignoring the problem.38
Baldwin does not claim to provide a power theory, but just a conceptual analysis of power
that can be made useful in empirical research. The approach is close to Oppenheim’s (see
chapter 3). Yet, Baldwin’s approach is very demanding on the empirical research design.
On the one hand, his analysis, by being based on counterfactuals of non-empirically
verfiable actions, and puts an enormous weight on theoretical assumptions about how
social relations work.39 Baldwin is very (rightly) critical of attempts to explain away the
35
David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 154.
David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 169.
37
David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 151.
38
David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 22.
39
There would be the possibility of resolving it in a Weberian approach, or to limit power to the
explanations of outputs, not outcomes. But then the causal analogy would have to give way to a dispositional
concept in which power analysis could only help to understand ex post how particular outcomes happened.
36
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
“paradox of unrealised power”, which became prominent in US writings during and after
Vietnam. He wants to keep the central explanatory weight of power and to avoid anything
that could be a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument. Baldwin insists on the possibility of
testing which implies the establishment of power bases before the influence attempt, and
this assessment of power is necessarily counterfactual.
On the other hand, he uses a causal concept of power to explain outcomes. As a
result, in this operationalisation, predictions about the impact of power can fail, because
the power scholar did not use a relational concept of power where the very definition of
a power base depends on a counterfactual assessment of its efficiency within a particular
“policy-contingency” framework. This imposes an extraordinary effort on the side of the
researcher. Unsuccessful power analysis is possible, not because “power” does not control
outcomes, but because researchers were mistaken in their counterfactual analysis. Power
bases cannot fail; power scholars do.
Here the degree of fungibility is again crucial. If “we defined each issue as existing
within a unique ‘policy-contingency framework,’ no generalizations would be possible.”40
Yet, we cannot exactly know, and certainly not beforehand, how unique the particular
framework is. It is here where Keohane and Nye’s models and theoretical assumptions
supplement Baldwin’s power approach as simplifying assumptions about the international
system.
3. The assessment of power under different models of the international
system
The concept of power requires a theoretical framework to make explanations. Neorealism
offers an approach which is modelled on the economic mode of explanation. Yet, as we
have seen, Baldwin severely qualifies the analogy between national interest and utility and
between power and money. Whereas Waltz’ approach tends to include these items on the
empirical stage of analysis, Baldwin is convicingly arguing for including them at the
conceptual and theoretical stage. Keohane and Nye’s framework supplements his conceptual approach to power with a more general framework of analysis. This framework might
not aspire to be a theory like Waltz’, but, in fact, it might have more explanatory value
than the latter’s. This section is devoted to explicating this approach.41
There is no tautology, because power does not explain the outcome.
40
Robert O. Keohane, “Theory of World Politics”, p. 187.
41
After the previous discussion, it should be clear that Neorealism is not confined to Waltz, nor does it
imply a derogatory meaning. It refers to the “Neorealism-Neoliberalism” debate which takes place on the
common ground of rational choice explanations. This debate is seen in terms of complementarity, like the
realist-idealist debate. In both cases, the most convincing Realists, like Aron, Bull, Claude, Herz, or Wolfers
for the first or Baldwin, Keohane and Nye for the second, were those who criticised their more materialistically deterministic or monocausal fellows. David A. Baldwin, “Neorealism, Neoliberalism, and World
Politics”, p. 24, sees such a synthesis delineating, but does not, unlike the present study, use a unique label.
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3.1. The international system: another continuum between Complex Interdependence and Realism
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye developed what they called the “World Politics
Paradigm”. Here, they argued that a purely state-centric paradigm is inadequate and set
out a research programme in which transnational relations “affect interstate politics by
altering the choices open to states men and the costs that must be borne for adopting
various courses of action”.42 They also stress a split of World Politics into different
issue-areas which the study of IR has to explore and to integrate by inspecting the
linkages.43 In their following work, this approach will be explored. As a result they
articulate an approach which is different from Realism, but which aims at including it.
Indeed, they present a dichotomy which, in several respects, restates Kissinger’s, Aron’s
or Wolfers’. Quite consequently the exposition of their approach starts by redefining
Realism’s central concept, power.
They define power in relation with “interdependence”. Whereas “sensitivity” independence assumes responsivenes within a given policy framework, the “vulnerability dimension of interdependence rests on the relative availability and costliness of the alternatives,
that various actors face.44 The latter is more important. It includes a strategic component
and focuses on the possible changes of the underlying rules of the game. Whenever there
exist asymmetrical interdependencies between actors, they provide sources for power.
Hence, their concept, by being tied to interdependencies, is a relational concept.
Moreover, they define two different power relations. Is only the sensitivity dimension is
activated, then we are in a direct influence attempt. Actors can, however, also try to
change the underlying rules of the game and thereby indirectly influence the outcome. In
both cases, the actual outcome is not explained by these relational capabilities. Thus, the
basic structure of the argument is the following: relational (potential) power deriving from
interdependencies (in different issue areas) → translation: bargaining process → influence
over outcomes.
If one set of rules puts an actor in a disadvantageous position, that actor will probably
try to change those rules if it can do so at a reasonable cost. Thus influence deriving
from favourable asymmetries in sensitivity is very limited when the underlying asymmetries in vulnerability are unfavourable. Asymmetrical interdependence by itself cannot
explain bargaining outcomes, even in traditional relations among states. As we said
earlier, power measured in terms of resources or potential may look different from
power measured in terms of influence over outcomes. We must look at the ‘translation’
in the political bargaining process.45
42
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Conclusion”, in their edited Transnational Relations and
World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 374.
43
ibid., p. 382.
44
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, jr., Power and Interdependence. World Politics in Transition
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), p. 15.
45
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Power and Interdependence, p. 18.
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
This translation will happen in different environments. They distinguish between the
conditions of Realism and of “Complex Interdependence”. For our purpose important
distinctions regard actor’s goals and means. In the first, military security is most
important, and the balance of power the main political instrument. In the latter, the goals
of states will vary by issue area. Power resources specific to issue areas will be most
relevant.46 Whereas Realist explanations are most suitable for the first case, the “International Organization Model” (IOM) assumes “that a set of networks, norms, and institutions, once established will be difficult either to eradicate or dramatically to rearrange”47
and are therefore close to Keohane’s later functionalist account of “regimes”.48 In other
words, fungibility is supposed to apply more in the Realist context, and less in Complex
Interdependence. To assess the impact of the distribution of power across issue areas one
therefore need a priori to know in which context the relations are set.
To judge from the texts, both writers never claimed to replace, but only to supplement
Realism. They explicitly caution about the use of the IOM, which, even under conditions
of complex interdependence, could be rendered invalid.49
The validity of the model depends on its assumptions that actors will not destroy the
regime by attempting to take advantage of one another’s vulnerability interdependence.
If, on the contrary, this occurs, underlying power resources within issue areas or overall
will once again become most important, and structural models will be better guides than
the International Organization Model to regime change. The two structural models therefore dominate the International Organization Model in the same way that vulnerability
interdependence dominates sensitivity interdependence as a power resource.50
Complex Interdependence and Realism become, hence, the renewed dichotomy to differentiate the international system which does only partly follows the security dilemma.51 In
this reformulation, the establishment of issue-structures within which conventional Realism
might apply, stresses the lack of fungibility across issue-structures, rather than within it.
This is an attempt to rescue the central explanatory value of the concept of power - by
46
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, p. 37.
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, p. 55.
48
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), chapters 5 and 6.
49
See also their argument in “Power and Interdependence Revisited”, pp. 728-29.
50
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, pp. 57-58.
51
It might be interesting to show the similarities with Aron’s homogeneous and heterogeneous systems.
Following Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, pp. 108-109, homogeneous systems are characterised by: (1) greater stability: the governments do not ignore the interests that unite them in spite of some
national interests which might oppose them; (2) a moderation of violence; (3) a greater previsibility, and (4)
a distinction between political adversary and national enemy: interstate hostility does not exclude reconciliation and later treaties. In a homogenous system, the international code of conduct disciplines the actors till
the moment, where the disruption of the system would cause them less harm then the prolongation of the
order. This system comes to an end if one of the actors feels oppressed, and/or translates different domestic
value systems to the international level and/or develops so much power that she wants to change the order.
47
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limiting (and defining a priori) the scope in issue-structures. The relation between Realism
and CI is hence dominantly Realist. CI can only apply where the actors stick to the rules
and do not try to change the regime.
3.2. Economic rational choice as causal analysis
This implies a synthesis between Realism and Liberalism which strips it of its predictive
capacities. Yet, although in later works, Keohane makes such arguments, he seems to stick
to an economic and not sociological conception of meaningful action.52
On the systemic level, Keohane argues for keeping the logical priority of the
international structure as the starting point for international explanations. Yet, he does not
imbue it with causal properties. When he discusses Hegemonic Stability Theory, he shows
empirical anomalies of the crude version, which derives the existence of regimes soleley
from shifts in the distribution of power. A more sophisticated version needs to rely on an
aspect of the unit-level, namely leadership. Whereas the first approach is a causal
explanation, the second is “a way of describing an international system in which
leadership is exercised by a single state. Rather than being a component of a scientific
generalization — that power is necessary or sufficient condition for cooperation — the
concept of hegemony, defined in terms of willingness as as ability to lead, helps us to
think about the incentives facing the potential hegemon.”53
On the unit-level he relaxes the power - maximisation assumption following Wolfers’
and Baldwin’s already-mentioned points.54 Inscribed in an explanatory scheme, institutions become intervening factors between the distribution of power and interests, and state
behaviour.55 Regimes are the context within which the translation process takes place.
On the basis of this framework, a rational choice approach, or strategic interaction, is used
to explain the outcome of actors’ behaviour (see Figure 5.1).
Yet, he seems much less inclined to accept Wolfers’ contention that this makes an
explanatory theory with predictive virtues impossible. Let me show this with his
discussion about the formation of interests. Keohane criticises the circular use of power
or wealth for empirical analysis, because they can only be assessed ex post. Yet he accepts
the focus on the pursuit of wealth and power as “working hypotheses about the motivations of actors that emphasize specific interests rather than ideology or rhetoric.”56 This
is supplemented by the assumptions that actors are rational egoists where rationality
implies consistent, ordered preferences, and cost-benefit calculus to maximise utility and
52
An explicit attempt to develop a non-economist rational model, see Michael Zürn, Interessen und
Institutionen in der internationalen Politik. Grundlegung und Anwendung des situationsstrukturellen Ansatzes
(Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1992).
53
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 39.
54
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 121.
55
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 64.
56
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, pp. 20-21, 22 (quote).
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
Figure 5.1 A simplified model of Robert O. Keohane’s rational actor model.
Egoism means that their utility functions are independent of one another.57 Hence, we
have the typical economic rational choice approach.58
Yet, at another place, he correctly argues that the assumptions of interest formation,
rational egoism, are rather reductionist. Indeed, he argues for intersubjectively derived
interests, not for the assumed pursuit of wealth and power:
Altruists and saints can be rational as the crassest materialist… It is the assumption of
egoism, not that of rationality, that their behavior violates… Rational-choice does not
necessarily imply that people are egoists. But to use rational-choice logic, one needs to
make some assumptions about the values and interests of the actors… Any rationalchoice analysis has to assume a prior context of power, expectations, values, and
conventions, which affect how interests are determined as well as what calculations,
given interests, are made.59
57
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 27.
Arthur Stein argues for a similar causal argument: deduction of a set of interests (or preferences) from
(1) structural factors, as the distribution of power, or changes in human knowledge, and (2) national factors
and then ascertaining what order will emerge. See Arthur Stein (1982) “Coordination and Collaboration:
Regimes in an Anarchic World”, in David A. Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 48-53.
59
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, pp. 74-75.
58
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On the one hand, he describes this approach as a Weberian ideal type explanation,
understood as a causal model. “The construction of unreal expectations based on
assumptions of rational egoism contributes to a causal analysis without committing us to
the view that the assumptions of the theory are necessarily true.”60 On the other hand,
he himself shows that no causality applies. On the systemic level, the distribution of
power is not a causal explanation. At the unit level, interests are derived from the context.
The content of utility maximisation is indeterminate, albeit the rational mechanism can be
assumed for all. The result would be to switch to an interpretive approach, where rational
choice serves not to predict or explain, but to understand particular historical cases. This
would be compatible with his reference to Clifford Geertz, where regimes are seen as the
necessary cultural background against which the meaning of an act of cooperation can be
interpreted and understood.61 It would also be compatible with his rebuttal of Grieco’s
critique that “relative gain” explanations are, among other things for reasons of fungibility,
inherently ambiguous.62 Finally, it would be consonant with Keohane’s case studies. He
comes to the result that in some issue-areas Realist explanations prevail, and in others
Complex Interdependence explanations.63 Yet, Keohane can show the dominance of the
CI model only a posteriori in a historical analysis. This is certainly not a new paradigm,
but puzzle-solving in the Normal Science of an old. If one takes Lakatos’ account of
scientific progress as basic approach, then this a posteriori element is considered a
characteristic of a “degenerative research programme”.64 Very honestly, he admits that
his analysis was no test or verification.65 But there is no discussion of switching to
another methodology or epistemology. Aron’s puzzles remain unchanged.
Similarly the arguments in favour of the causal explanatory model are made in the
same vein in which Bull argued for an overall concept of power: even if it might not be
there, we need it. He endorses the “systemic first” part of Waltz, because “causal analysis
is difficult at the unit level because of the apparent importance of idiosyncratic factors”
and because “analyzing state behaviour from ‘inside-out’ alone leads observers to ignore
60
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 70.
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 56.
62
Robert O. Keohane, “Institutional Theory and the Realist Challenge after the Cold War”, in David A.
Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 276-77.
Joseph Grieco accepts that he has not yet much treated the convertibility of such gaps in gains into increments
of additional influence and the fungibility of this additional influence across issues. See Joseph M. Grieco,
“Understanding the problem of international cooperation: the limits of neoliberal institutionalism and the
future of realist theory”, in David A. Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism, p. 328.
63
Robert O. Keohane, “The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and changes in international economic
regimes, 1967-1977”, in Ole R. Holsti, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alexander L. George (eds), Change in the
International System (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press), pp. 131-162.
64
Keohane accepts Lakatos’ epistemological position. See “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism
and Beyond", p. 160 f. For a paradigmatic statement of degenerative research programmes, see Imre Lakatos,
“Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes”, in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds), Criticism and
the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press), p. 118.
65
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, pp. 217-18.
61
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the context of action: the pressures exerted on all states by the competition among
them.”66 The first is only a problem if one conceives structural causal explanation as the
only possible form of science. And the second is a problem of the researcher. There is
nothing inherent in an indivudalist Weberian approach that would turn attention away
from considering the context: indeed, to understand this context, one needs to refer to the
meanings given by the actors. Again, competition is said to exist as if it was a natural
fact.
Hence, Keohane sticks to an approach where the international realm sets the range of
successful behaviour (independently of the actor’s perceptions) and where actors are
assumed to act as rational egoists pursuing wealth and power. He complements Baldwin’s
concept of power by specifiying the different international contexts, i.e. the most general
policy-contingency frameworks, within which different fungibilities apply. Both conceive
power relationally. They see power analysis as a translation process from potential to
actual power. Both see this translation as empirically difficult to study for the low
fungibility assumption. They resist the “conversion process model” where the translation
failures are explained entirely by lacking will. But since both show the difficulty of
assessing power a priori, they cannot really show how one would be able to make a
clearcut prediction. Despite their attempt to leave a causal analysis intact, their own
discussion undermines the possibility of a causal analysis of the positivist kind. Educated
guesses can always be rearranged post hoc. Therefore Keohane repeatedly speaks about
“description”. But they do not follow Aron’s path to leave power analysis as a possibility
to interpret particular historical systems and outcomes.67
4. Neorealist Power Analysis
In the following, I define Neorealist power analysis by referring only to one part in both
Baldwin’s and Keohane’s approach. Although I have shown that their theoretical discussion very subtly shows the difficulties of such a project, I will not pick up those passages
which seem closer to an interpretive approach, but extrapolate the causal analysis they
both declare to be their aim. Neorealist power analysis will refer to a postivistic causal
approach based on an economistic rational choice. Let me summarise its charateristics.
The Neorealist concept of power is relational and causal. The resulting analysis takes
low fungibility into account and explains an outcome by inscribing actors’ power and
interests within different international contexts. The analysis proceeds in stages. First, the
systemic level is varied. One establishes the particular issue-structures within which the
behaviour is studied. Then, the interdependencies or policy-contingency frameworks help
to assess the distribution of (potential) power. This distribution of power is now inscribed
66
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 25.
Given his own theoretical discussion, it is quite difficult to understand, why a historical sociology
approach would be as impossible as Keohane implies: “Without prior systemic theory, unit-level analysis of
world politics floats in an empirical and conceptual vacuum.” See After Hegemony, p. 26.
67
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into the continuum from Realism to Complex Interdependence. This variance causally
explains different unti-level behaviour. Second, the unit-level is varied for the translation
of potential into actual power over outcomes. Once the systemic factors are assessed,
strategic interaction plays out the actor’s behavioural properties. These consist in the now
established power and the assumed stable interests in survival, expressed as the pursuit of
wealth and power. Controlled for the factor of will, perception, and bounded rationality,
the strategic interaction of power causes the outcome.
Keohane and Baldwin seek to have an explanatory theory close to the economic
model of explanation. Here one does not limit rational choice to the understanding of past
events (for which a dispositional concept of power would be perfect), but wants to explain
or predict behaviour on the basis of a set of opportunites, beliefs, desires and rational
action. Baldwin explicitly argues against the attempt to use conversion problems as the
sole explanation for erroneous outcome predictions. He prefers the assumption of low
fungibility. This has the effect of diminishing the intentional part in power explanations,
but it does not expunge the dilemma of producing testable predictions under counterfactual
conditions in a social science. Without the assumption of a kind of power - money
analogy, this undertaking cannot work.
Keohane discusses the problem that Baldwin’s policy-contingency framework might
be unique every time. The theory proceeds, however, against such an assumption. Indeed,
Keohane and Nye repeatedly stress that systematic theories of linkages, albeit not yet
available, will help us in the future to resolve the problem.68 This is not sure, though.
If (1) the aim is to strengthen the explanatory value of the complex and multidimensional
concept of power; (2) this is to be done by recovering the rationalising (Morgenthau,
Waltz) or causal (Dahl) aspects of power; (3) the recovering is done by reducing the focus
of power analysis in domain and scope (and to actual decisions), because all other power
analysis is close to meaningless; then the reconstruction of the different dimension of
power through scope/domain linkages will present the same difficulties as the concept of
overall-power on its original complex and multidimensional level. Were a theory of
linkages possible, one would not need to disaggregate power in scope or domain.
68
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, “Power and Interdependence Revisited”.
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6
Structural Power:
The Limits of Neorealist Power Analysis
After the return to a scientific form of Realism, power analysis increasingly turned from
a defense to a critique of Realism. In this chapter, I shall argue that the turn from Realism
to Neorealism, with its consequent reliance on economic methodology, in fact diminished
the substantial range of the original concept of power. It is the basic underlying thrust of
the present study that taking power analysis seriously leads beyond Neorealism.
Some recent studies by authors dissatisfied with existing versions of Neorealism have
attempted to widen the power concept to include what has been called structural power.
Their common claim is that the focus on strategic interaction or the bargaining level of
analysis does not capture important power phenomena. I shall argue that these notions of
structural power involve three distinct meanings, of which only one can be shown to be
compatible with the choice-theoretical power concept that underlies Neorealism.
Finally, this chapter claims that none of the structural power concepts is able to
provide both a comprehensive and a coherent power analysis, either because it still omits
particular power phenomena or because it overloads the concept of power. Instead of
pursuing the track of continuously widening the concept, I will propose a pair or dyad of
concepts. The word “power” will be reserved as an agent concept, and the term
“governance” will represent effects not due to a particular agent, whether individual or
collective. More generally, the term “power analysis” will encompass both concepts and
deal with the link between power and international governance.
By approaching power from the methodological level, this study presents a more
systematic analysis than those that either take the form of reviews, or enumerations of
different approaches, or else do not even consider the literature beyond David Baldwin.1
1
See respectively Richard L. Sklar, “On the Concept of Power in Political Economy”, in Dalmas H.
Nelson and Richard L. Sklar (eds), Towards a Humanistic Science of Politics: Essays in Honor of F. Dunham
100
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The argument will be pursued in two steps. A first part will analyse three meanings
of structural power. Then, I shall propose a more coherent power analysis characterised
by a dyad of concepts.
1. Beyond Neorealism? Meanings of structural power
Some recent studies have attempted to widen the power concept to include what has been
called “structural power.” I shall argue that these new notions of structural power involve
three different meanings, namely indirect institutional power, nonintentional power, and
impersonal empowering (See Table 5.1). Only one of them is yet compatible with the
underlying framework of Neorealism, and none is able to provide a framework for the
analysis of power phenomena that is both encompassing and coherent.
Table 5.1: Meanings of structural power and related concepts.
Power as the production of
indirect institutional effects
unintended/unconscious effects
Impersonally
created effects
Krasner
Meta-power
Strange
structural power
Caporaso
Cap. & Haggard
structural power
structural power
locational power
Gill & Law
structural power
hegemony/structural power
Ashley
structural power
hegemony in the
realm of doxa
1.1. Power as a relational concept: indirect institutional power as an update of
Neorealist power analysis
One meaning of structural power is indirect institutional power. These concepts of
structural power (or meta-power) have to be understood as control over outcomes not via
Wortmuth (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), pp. 179-206; James Caporaso and Stephen
Haggard, “Power in the International Political Economy”, in Richard J. Stoll and Michael D. Ward (eds),
Power in World Politics (Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989), pp. 99-120. David A. Baldwin’s
“Interdependence and Power” is the last reference in Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham (eds), The
Dictionary of World Politics: A Reference Guide to Concepts, Ideas and Institutions (New York: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 322-24.
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
direct confrontation, but by changing the setting in which the confrontation occurs. Even
though this seems to depart from the usual Neorealist power analysis, a comparison with
Baldwin’s framework will show that it is in fact compatible with the assumptions of the
economic approach. This concept is unsatisfactory, however, because it is too restrictive
even for an agent-based concept of power.
Explicitly relying on Bacharach’s and Baratz’ “second face of power”, Cheryl
Christensen develops a similar concept of “structural power” where actors control the
agenda, or the situational setting in which interaction occurs.2 Later, Stephen Krasner tries
to extend his particular regime analysis to embrace a form of power analysis. He analyzes
how the regime concept can be located on the same conversion process from resources
via power to influence (over outcomes) that we have already met in Keohane and Nye.
He thus follows the traditional Realist assumption, that regimes are, in the last resort, still
a function of the distribution of power and the relations among states. However, there
need not always be congruity among power distribution, regimes and related behavior or
outcomes. In other words, there is a time lag of adjustment that allows for a certain autonomy of the realm of norms, as well as an interactive process between (power) base and
norms.3 Therefore, lags and feedbacks between power base and regime are the basic
puzzles of Krasner’s research program. Krasner makes two points about the interaction of
power and regimes. First, he argues that changes of regimes alter the context in such a
way to render particular resources more important for power capability than others. The
approach thereby recovers part of what one could call the historically contingent character
of power resources.4 Second, regimes can, after a time lag, be conceived of as independent sources of influence.
However, through a shift of the argument, power and regime are not only two
different sources of influence but regime is in fact reduced to a source of power. Krasner
has defined power as potential control over resources, and conceived of power resources
as those phenomena that can be used to exercise influence. It follows that normative
structures and regimes can be envisaged as just another type of power source and their
potential control as just another form of power. Then, one could argue, Krasner’s two
approaches to power and regime are fused into one. Krasner has taken this logical step by
defining a second level of power relations:
The boundaries of this work can be more clearly delineated by distinguishing between
two categories of political behavior. Relational power behavior refers to efforts to
maximize values within a given set of institutional structures; meta-power behavior
refers to efforts to change the institutions themselves. Relational power refers to the
2
Cheryl Christensen, “Structural Power and National Security”, in Klaus Knorr and Frank N. Trager (eds),
Economic Issues and National Security (Kansas: Regents Press for the National Security Education Program,
1977), pp. 127ff.
3
Stephen D. Krasner, “Regimes and the Limits of Realism: Regimes as autonomous variables”,
International Organization, vol. 36, no. 2 (Spring 1982), p. 499.
4
For this argument, see Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, p. 64.
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ability to change outcomes or affect the behavior of others within a given regime.
Meta-power refers to the ability to change the rules of the game. Outcomes can be
changed both by altering the resources available to individual actors and by changing
the regimes that condition action.5
Since regimes are a source of power, any intentional attempt to change regimes or to set
new institutional frames for actors’ capabilities must be integrated into power analysis.
This is an indirect form of power and is often hidden or tacit. Both Christensen and
Krasner argue their case with respect to the New International Economic Order as an
attempt to change the institutional settings in which North-South relations occur in order
to upset the relational power advantage of the North. Recall that power conceptualisations
in policy sciences can redefine the realm of political issues. Whereas Christensen is
interested in the extent to which OPEC or the Group of 77 will succeed in opening the
agenda in their favour, i.e. if their structural power attempt can be successful, Krasner’s
analysis prepares the ground for the US and UK to leave international regimes for the
“necessary” (thus non-changeable) features of international politics. Power redefines the
political borders of the status quo which was found, here, to be too large for US
interests.6
This wider concept of meta-power is consistent with Baldwin’s power approach. In
both, one must include a contextual analysis of social norms and a study of the historical
background before assessing power. This has the important consequence that any technological, political, cultural, or normative development that improves the efficacy of certain
resources in affecting outcomes can, in turn, become a target for attempts to gain
influence. Therefore, two strategies are possible to improve one’s potential power in a
given situation: either a quantitative improvement of the relevant situational power
resources or a change of the environment that defines the situationally relevant power
resources. The latter is exactly what Krasner defines as “meta-power.” Thus, the
intentional agenda-setting that Krasner tried to integrate into Realist power analysis can
indeed be coherently accounted for within the methodology used by Neorealists.
1.2. Power as a dispositional concept: nonintentional power and the limits of
Neorealist power analysis
The second distinct meaning of structural power is still conceived at the level of agents,
but refers to an action’s unintended (and sometimes unconscious) effects. This meaning
5
Stephen D. Krasner, Structural Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 14. For a
very similar approach, see Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Soft Power”, Foreign Policy, no. 80 (Fall 1990), pp. 153-71,
in particular pp. 166-68. On top of the traditional “command power”, he conceives of a form of power, called
“co-optive power” or “soft power,” which (1) expressed in terms of resources, is derived from intangible
resources like the rules in regimes, and cultural and/or ideological attraction; and (2) expressed in terms of
power exercises, consists in structuring the situations in which power relations occur.
6
Krasner’s argument was made in the context of the US and the UK decisions to “react” against this
attempt by quitting the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
cannot be simply grafted onto a Neorealist understanding of power, because the latter links
power to intentionality. It can be linked to a dispositional concept of power. This section
will show how the second meaning of structural power can successfully supplement
Krasner’s concept. In the final part of the chapter, dispositional approaches of this sort
will be shown to be unsatisfactory because their concept of structure is too limited.
Strange’s work illustrates this notion of structual power as nonintentional power. She
developed her concept in opposition to the literature of American hegemonic decline. The
expression of “decline” is chosen on purpose. Hegemonic Stability Theory can be
characterised by three propositions7:
(1) The emergence of a hegemon is conducive/necessary for the provision of an international public good (hegemony thesis).
(2) The necessary existence of free riders and/or a loss of legitimacy will undermine the
relative power position of the hegemon (entropy thesis).
(3) A declining hegemonic power presages a declining provision of the international
public good (decline thesis).
For Strange, the hegemonic decline school is based on a fallacious inversion of the
last thesis, namely, that the declining provision of international public goods would
indicate the declining power of the hegemon. She tries to show that the United States is
not unable but just unwilling, to provide or help to provide, basic functions of a global
political economy. Her concept of structural power is crucial in pointing to the global
reach of a so-called transnational Empire with the United States at its center.
She uses structural power to refer to the increasing diffusion of international power,
in both its effects and its origins, due to the increasing transnationalisation of nonterritorially linked networks. Structural power is, on the one hand, a concept similar to
Krasner’s intentional meta-power: the ability to shape the security, financial, productive,
and knowledge structures.8 Here, power is structural because it has an indirect diffusion
via structures. On the other hand, Strange understands power as structural, because it
refers to the increasingly diffused sources and agents that contribute to the functioning of
the global political economy.9 Taken together, the provision of global functions appears
as the result of an interplay of deliberate and nonintentional influence of decisions and
7
The reference definition of hegemonic stability theory has been given by Robert O. Keohane, “The
Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in International Economic Regimes, 1967-1977”, in Ole R.
Holsti, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alexander L. George (eds), Change in the International System (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 1980), pp. 131-62. Yet it seems too much tailored for his regime-approach, neglecting
the collective good argument. For a convincing argument, see Duncan Snidal, “The Limits of Hegemonic
Stability Theory,” International Organization, vol. 39, no. 4 (Autumn 1985), pp. 579-614, especially p. 581.
8
Susan Strange, “International Political Economy: The Story So Far and the Way Ahead,” in W. Ladd
Hollist and F. LaMond Tullis, eds., An International Political Economy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
1985), p. 15.
9
For a concise presentation of recent power concepts with a similar analysis of Strange’s approach, see
Bertrand Badie and Marie-Claude Smouts, Le retournement du monde: Sociologie de la scène internationale
(Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques & Dalloz, 1992), pp. 148-56.
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nondecisions made by governments and other actors.10 The international system appears
as run by a “transnational empire,” whose exact center is difficult to locate because it is
not tied to a specific territory, but whose main base is in the United States.11 In other
words, even though actors in the United States might not always intend or be able to
control the effects of their actions, the international structures are set up in a way that
decision in some countries are systematically tied to and affect actors in the same and
other countries.
The September 1992 crisis of the European Monetary System (EMS) shows that
structural power exists also outside the United States. German reunification led to inflation
that was controlled only partly through a reversal of prior fiscal policies. The German
Bundesbank then exported the problem via higher interest rates. These higher rates helped
to trigger a speculative attack on the British Pound and the Italian Lira. This, in turn,
involved so much money moving across borders, that central banks quickly judged interventions to be too costly for both the inflating DM and the deflating monetary reserves
of the attacked currencies. Thus, one basic reason for these effects is a specific policy mix
decided by the German government together with the strained social consensus in
Germany. Germany’s position and sheer “weight” within the European system gives it the
privilege of avoiding some of the painful adjustments others are facing. It manages a
transnational currency as if it were a national one.12 Yet, for particular actors, many of
what appear to be purely domestic decisions in fact significantly affect other actors,
whether intentionally or not. Actors in Germany have a great deal of nonintentional or
nonconscious power to which all the other participants of the international game must
nevertheless adapt their behavior (typically in worst-case scenarios). Or to use an image
of Pierre Hassner’s for the description of a condominium: it does not make any difference
to the trampled grass if the elephants above it make love or war. This structural power is
underrated if one analyzes power only in the control of specific contests where different
intentions clash.
The remaining part of this section will analyse the two implicit claims of this form
of structural power. First, it will show that economic approaches can include the study of
10
See the following works by Susan Strange: “What about International Relations?” in Susan Strange,
ed., Paths to International Political Economy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), pp. 190-91. This
notion is developed most fully in States and Markets: An Introduction to International Political Economy
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). For the empirical analysis of US non-decisions, see Casino Capitalism
(London: Basil Blackwell, 1986), chap. 2.
11
Susan Strange, “Toward a Theory of Transnational Empire,” in Global Changes and Theoretical
Challenges, pp. 161-76.
12
With regard to the management of the U.S. dollar, this critique has a longer tradition. To cite just one
example: Raymond Aron, Les dernières années du siècle (The Century’s Last Years) (Paris: Julliard, 1984),
p. 44. It is important to note that the power to avoid or to export adjustments can on the long run undermine
the very base of “national” power. This argument is most thoroughly made in David P. Calleo’s work, as e.g.
The Imperious Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982); and Beyond American Hegemony. The Future of the Western Alliance (New York: Basic Books, 1987). See also Dieter Senghaas,
Friedensprojekt Europa (Peace Project Europe) (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1992), p. 55.
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
non-intentional effects, but must exclude it from the concept and analysis of power and
refer to it as a random issue or simply good or bad “luck”. Second, nonintentional power
can, however, be accounted for by a methodological individualist position. Strange’s
approach is based not on an economic, but on a dispositional concept of power.
For the exclusion of nonintentional effects from the concept and analysis of power,
we return to Baldwin’s framework as the choice-theoretical reference point. Baldwin tries
to elaborate a policy-oriented, manipulative, and thus agent-focused theory of power. This
empirical research programme allows for a much wider type of reasoning that focuses on
outcomes and not on a manipulative agent. In other words, Baldwin seems to be torn
because of a conceptual dilemma that is also applicable to Krasner’s concept: His
conceptual approach to power expands to include all effects that influence outcomes,
whereas his actual policy analysis argues for a power concept that is limited to the
intentional agent. We could describe this in William Riker’s terminology as a dilemma in
which Baldwin’s aim is the study of statecraft through a “recipe-like” concept of causality
(and power), while his conceptual analysis pulls him toward a “necessary and sufficient”
kind of causality.13 Whereas the former focuses on manipulative techniques, the latter
aims at a full explanation of what affects the outcome, whether overtly or covertly.
According to Baldwin, “Although Riker may be correct in asserting the superiority of the
latter concept of causality for some types of science, the former concept is more useful
in the policy sciences and will therefore be employed here.”14 Yet, as Riker says, “The
more profound difficulty with recipe-causality, however, is that it takes as fixed all
relevant variables, except the manipulative one... If a non-manipulative variable in the
antecedent condition does have a relation to the effect, then it must be involved in the
cause, even though recipe-causality does not admit it.”15 In his attempt to preserve power
as an operationalisable causal concept, Baldwin incorporates more and more items to
account for the exact contextual assessment of manipulative techniques; yet, he avoids
providing the full account of the causality chain towards which this very extension pulls
his analysis. To cite Riker again:
The difference between the two kinds of causality is, like the difference among
definitions of power, a difference in orientation toward outcomes. In recipe-like
causality, the full explanation of the effect is not the problem. Rather the problem is to
explain how the effect can be made to occur. If no manipulative technique is available,
cause may be non-existent. By contrast, in the necessary and sufficient condition kind
of causality, the center of attention is on the effect rather than on manipulative
13
William H. Riker, “Some Ambiguities in the Notion of Power”, in R. Bell, D.V. Edwards, R.H. Wagner
(eds), Political Power: A Reader in Theory and Practice (New York: Free Press, 1969), p. 116. The recipelike concept is defined as the production of effects through the manipulation of nature.
14
David Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, p. 26.
15
Riker, “Some Ambiguities in the Notion of Power,” p. 116.
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techniques. Here the full explanation of outcomes is at stake. Hence, cause cannot be
non-existent, although it can be unidentified.16
The choice of a recipe concept of power deprives the analysis of those causal factors that
cannot be linked or reduced to the agent’s conscious manipulation of the resources at
hand. Power as the production of unintended effects is not captured because it falls outside
the causal link between A’s intention and B’s changed behavior. The only exception that
the pluralist power literature accepts, the rule of anticipated reaction, is a case of imputed
intentions, but intentions nevertheless. Therefore, by reducing the analysis of power to the
establishment of a causal chain from A’s intention to the outcome, a choice-theoretical
approach cannot theoretically incorporate the idea of power as unintended effects into the
concept of power.
This does not mean that these unintended effects are forgotten in a choice-theoretical
analysis. Riker’s important point consists of showing that by sticking to a specific mode
of explanation, these unintended effects must be dealt with either as environmental
constraints or as purely random phenomena. Since manipulative power entails the idea that
one can change the course of affairs, those excluded items appear as a kind of fate against
which even the most powerful actors remain powerless. The far-reaching consequence of
this apparently innocent methodological move lies on the level of political action and
responsibility. If we have to face fate, then there is nothing to do. Yet, Strange’s insistence
on unintended effects attempts to show that agents could make a difference if they wanted
to. Her widened concept of power aims at shedding light on the possibilities for change
and on the (political) responsibility for nonmanipulative effects that a limited concept of
power will tend to disregard.
Concepts of structural power suggest that this widening of the concept needs to integrate a structural element into the power concept. In fact, this is not true. One can leave
intentionality out of an agent-based power concept, but it is then necessary to relax the
empiricist assumptions, the interactionist approach, and the general causal analogy. Thus,
the analytical chain starts not from an agent’s intentions but from basic actions. That this
conceptualisation is not just a theoretical possibility can be shown by referring to a recent
redefinition of power in exactly these terms.
Peter Morriss bases his analysis on a concept of power that he distinguishes from
mere influence by pointing to the profound dispositional character of power: power, to
him, refers to a capacity, ability or dispositional property. “So power, as a dispositional
concept, is neither a thing (a resource or vehicle) nor an event (an exercise of power): it
is a capacity.”17 Since power is defined as an ability, every basic action, controlled by
will, at the disposal of an actor can be considered as power. The capacity to influence by
16
17
ibid., p. 117. Emphasis added.
Peter Morriss, Power, p. 19, original emphasis.
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will is thus a criterion to distinguish power from a (dispositional) property. Morriss goes
on to distinguish, as shown in Figure 2, three categories of ability:18
Figure 6.1 Peter Morriss’ dispositional conceptualisation of abilities.
Since this conceptualisation of power is based on “effecting”, Morriss disposes also
of a category for nonintentional power. “Non-epistemic” abilities are those that are
effected in an uncontrolled way, such as when agents are unaware of their capacities and
their consequences or they choose the wrong basic action for the intended outcome. This
category is able to take account of Strange’s idea of nonintentional power that looks at
power from the “receiving side.” Morriss shows that whenever “we want to work out what
people might do to us, it is non-epistemic power we are concerned with.”19
This stress on mere capacities and not their exercise seems at first hand close to the
traditional power analyses in IR. The important difference is that those approaches posited
a direct link between the control of outcomes and capacities, whether they are implemented or not. Strange’s structural power looks at power from the point of view of the
diffused power effects, and stresses the uncontrolled consequences of power actions.20
18
Peter Morriss, Power, p. 54.
Peter Morriss, Power, p. 54.
20
Coming to the second side of her power approach, the diffusion not of the effects but of the origins of
power, she does, however, individualize a privileged actor, the “international business civilization.” In other
words, nonintentional power is very unevenly distributed throughout the international power structure.
19
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The major difference between such a dispositional approach and an interactionist
rational-choice approach is that these consequences are part of the power assessment and
are not just random. This contradicts approaches like Klaus Knorr’s, for instance, who
explicitly and coherently refuses to accept such a form of nonintentional power. Knorr
dismisses François Perroux’s concept of dominance, which is close to Strange’s structural
power, as purely incidental and therefore irrelevant for power analysis.21 This exclusion
of nonintentionality privileges the manipulative actor’s (or power holder’s) view and
leaves the analysis of power with a specific blind spot, the tacit power of the strong. If
Neorealism goes on following this route, it is to be expected that criticisms of the kind
implicit in different structural power concepts will continually reappear. Hence Baldwin
very honestly acknowledges, albeit without much elaboration, that “Concepts of power
that allow for the possibility of unintended influence may be more useful to the student
of dependency and autonomy than other power concepts.”22
1.3. Power as a structural/intersubjective concept: impersonal power
The last of the three meanings of structural power and related concepts can be generically
described as impersonal power because the origin of the produced effect is not located at
the level of actors. Here, two different conceptualisations can be distinguished. The first
could be described as a positional concept that focuses on the impersonal bias of
international relations that systematically gives an advantage to certain actors due to their
specific position or role in the international system. The second stresses the link between
knowledge and power, arguing that power requires prior intersubjective recognition. Both
approaches explicitly attempt to abandon the underlying choice-theoretical mode of
explanation. These concepts too are unsatisfactory because they tend to overload and thus
render incoherent the single concept of power. This section will present the two
approaches; the next part takes their insufficiencies as the basis for developing a different
power analysis derived from a dyad of concepts.
The first, more positional, approach to power has been introduced by James Caporaso.
He accepts the centrality of power, yet gives it a double twist in order to incorporate the
link between the global political economy and less developed countries’ economic and
political development. The focus on “bargaining power in asymmetrical interdependence”
is considered insufficient.23 He acknowledges that dependence is, on the bargaining level,
21
Klaus Knorr, Power and Wealth: The Political Economy of International Power (London: Macmillan,
1973), pp. 77-78.
22
David A. Baldwin, “Interdependence and Power: A Conceptual Analysis”, in Paradoxes of Power, p.
205.
23
James A. Caporaso, “Introduction to the Special Issue on Dependence and Dependency in the Global
System” (and) “Dependence, Dependency, and Power in the Global System: a Structural and Behavioral
analysis,” International Organization, vol. 32, no. 1 (Winter 1978), pp. 4, 28. This alludes to Keohane and
Nye’s Power and Interdependence.
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no criterion for a qualitative differentiation of less developed countries.24 Yet he includes
the so-called “second face” of power, derived from Bacharach and Baratz, to save a
concept of dependency. This is called structural power. Implicitly, he also repeats the
ambiguity between nondecisions as “structural bias” or as “antedecisions that can be found
in the work of Bacharach and Baratz.25 Caporaso refers to the latter in his definition of
structural power as “the ability to manipulate the choices, capabilities, alliance
opportunities, and pay-offs that actors may utilise.”26 This is in line with Krasner’s
concept of meta-power. Yet he also speaks of “the social structuring of agendas [that]
might systematically favor certain parties”, which is definitely an impersonal concept.27
In a similar vein, Gill and Law try to overcome a behavioural power paradigm in IR
and IPE by a concept of structural power that is said to capture better the indirect forms
of power.28 Explicitly following Lukes, they begin by distinguishing three dimensions
of power: overt, covert, and structural.29 Later, they introduced a direct/indirect
distinction which seems to rely on individual action as the distinctive criterion. Thus, overt
and covert power are linked to agents’ decisions and nondecisions in pursuing their
interests, whereas structural power refers to “material and normative aspects, such that
patterns of incentives and constraints are systematically created.”30
Their “impersonal material setting” is nearly synonymous with the functioning of
markets. Through markets, the structural power of capital is exercised.31 The state-market
nexus becomes the very center of the analysis.32 Gill and Law focus on the relationship
24
Ibid., p. 2, 18. This point has been most elegantly made by Sanjaya Lall, “Is ‘Dependence’ a useful
concept in analysing underdevelopment?”
25
This ambiguity has been largely neglected in the literature. For an exception, see Geoffrey Debnam,
The Analysis of Power, p. 24.
26
James A. Caporaso, “Introduction to the Special Issue on Dependence and Dependency in the Global
System”, p. 4.
27
James Caporaso, “Dependence, Dependency, and Power in the Global System: a Structural and
Behavioral analysis,” p. 33. In more recent writings, he retreats slightly from this latter position. He retains
the basic division between relational (agent-based) and structural power approaches. Yet, together with
Stephen Haggard, he now concludes that these forms of power are not necessarily competing categories: they
both refer to (different kinds) of resources that affect outcomes understood as bargains (see their “Power in
the International Political Economy”). For a critique of this argument, see the analysis of Hugh Ward, in the
third part of this chapter.
28
See in particular two works by Stephen Gill and David Law: The Global Political Economy (New York:
Harvester, 1988); and “Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 4 (December 1989), pp. 475-99.
29
For a similar account, based on Steven Lukes’s three dimensions, see Keith Krause, “Military Statecraft:
Power and Influence in Soviet and American Arms Transfer Relationships”, International Studies Quarterly,
vol. 35, no. 3 (September 1991), pp. 313-36.
30
Stephen Gill and David Law, The Global Political Economy, p. 73.
31
For the definition of capital, see “Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital,” pp. 480-81.
Note that the terms “power of markets” and “structural power” are sometimes used interchangeably; see The
Global Political Economy, p. 97.
32
The state/market nexus “politicises” (in an Eastonian way) international economic relations. The
analysis is centred around the two competing authoritative allocation mechanisms (for values or resources)
that exist: states and markets. See Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Internationale Politik: Ein Konfliktmodell (Paderborn,
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between the political organisation of the global political economy into nation-states and
the power of capital. On the one hand, international anarchy enhances capital’s bargaining
position, allowing it to play one country against another; on the other hand, national
sovereignty can reduce capital’s power through statist intervention, such as welfarism,
mercantilism, and the public sector. The absence of a world government is as much a
structural prerequisite for the power of capital as a limitation to the potentially global
reach of market-economic activities. Hence, in the material part of their approach, the
logic of the market overtakes the balance of power or regimes as the central and slightly
mechanistic explanatory variable, which provides the basic causality and predictive
virtue.33
However, Gill and Law also stress a second normative aspect of structural power/
hegemony. This is the basic link between structural power and Antonio Gramsci’s analysis
of hegemony, which, following the work of Robert Cox, they want to transfer to the
international level. True, no Realist would dispute the derivation of norms from power
relations, the conservative bias of law in the hands of the ruling group, the importance of
the normative setting for specific historic global political economies (regimes of accumulation), or, finally, the anticipated ruling of power where its overt demonstration is not
needed.34 However, the Gramscian approach derives the ruling ideology from a class
analysis, that is from the sphere of production.35 It goes beyond crude materialism by
pointing to the fact that the ruling elite can coopt part of the ruled into a “historic bloc”
which makes orthodox revolutionary politics impossible. The research program of this
power approach consists of finding the new transnational historic bloc and the way its
(neoliberal) discourse and practice suborns dependent classes and preempts their
opposition.
This latter point, in particular the consensual aspect of power, has been developed by
Ashley in the second impersonal conceptualisation of power as power/knowledge. The
consensual aspect is traditionally handled through the concept of legitimacy that, in the
usual reading of Max Weber, distinguishes between power (Macht) and authority/rule
(Herrschaft). Herrschaft requires legitimacy, that is, a form of internal acceptance by the
power addressees.36 The poststructuralist twist can be seen in the metatheoretical location
of phenomena of power. This means that consensus is conceptualised not only in an
F.R.G.: Schöningh, 1981) and “Internationalizing Politics: Some Answers to the Question of Who Does What
to Whom,” in Czempiel and Rosenau, Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges, pp. 117-34.
33
See therefore “Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital,” p. 485.
34
See for the first point Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, pp. 342ff., and for the latter,
Kenneth Waltz, “International Structure, National Force, and the Balance of Power”, p. 309. Note in this
context Antonio Gramsci’s interest in the Italian Realist tradition (Niccolò Machiavelli, Gaetano Mosca,
Vilfredo Pareto) in Noterelle sulla politica del Machiavelli. Quaderno 13 (Turin: Einaudi, 1981).
35
Robert Cox insists in “Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method,”
Millennium 12 (Summer 1983), pp. 162-75 on the rooting of hegemony in social forces, to avoid repeating
Machiavelli (see especially p. 164).
36
Norberto Bobbio, “La teoria dello stato e del potere”, p. 226.
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agent’s recognition but also as produced and reproduced outcomes of rituals and discourses that are not intentionally effected by particular actors. Legitimacy understood as the
result of a social contract is an insufficient concept to account comprehensively for consensus and governance.37 In this formulation, the consensual aspect of power entails, but
means certainly something more than, a shift of focus to a kind of Weberian approach
wrapped in a Gramscian blanket.38 This approach has, then, its specificity not only in the
actual meaning given to power but also in the realm to which it is applied. It does not
analyse power in IR and IPE as reflected in its discourse, but the power of precisely this
discourse. The poststructuralist critique aims at that level where such power practices are
concealed, that is, the metatheoretical level which underlies Realist analysis and consequently its deliberate policies.39 The Realist discourse is attacked as a power practice
itself.
Ashley expands what one could call a communicative approach40 to a Foucauldian
genealogical power conceptualisation. His genealogical attitude can be summarised as an
attempt to reveal the power practices that bind, conquer, and administer social space and
time, that is, the emergence of “disciplines.”41
Crucial for this understanding of power is a specific concept of practices that includes
not only interactive influence attempts but also rites, routines, and discourses. Thereby one
disposes of an intersubjective level of analysis different from an objectified or even
determinist structure and from an intentional agent. Rites and routines are not just a
constraint or a resource for agents, but they empower agents. In this approach it makes
sense to speak of the power of rites. According to David Kertzer, “The power of the rite
is based in good part on the potency of its symbols and its social context… People’s
emotional involvement in political rites is certainly a key source of their power.”42
There are two ways in which rites can be linked to power. First, they can obviously
be used as a means or source of an intentional influence attempt. A recent example is the
Western propaganda that modelled Saddam Hussein as a modern Adolf Hitler. The
37
See also Michel Foucault, “Corso del 14 gennaio 1976,” in Michel Foucault, Microfisica del Potere.
Interventi Politici (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), p. 188.
38
For the stress on Herrschaft, see Ulrich Albrecht, Internationale Politik. Einführung in das System internationaler Herrschaft (München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1986). For the Gramscian wording, see Bradley S.
Klein, “Hegemony and Strategic Culture: American Power Projection and Alliance Defence Policies,” Review
of International Studies 14 (April 1988), pp. 133-48, in particular p. 134.
39
The most radical power critique at the metatheoretical level is the poststructuralist branch of feminism.
See Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson, “The Radical Future of Realism: Feminist Subversions of
IR Theory,” Alternatives, vol. 16, no. 1 (1991), pp. 75-76 and 97-98.
40
Richard Little, “Deconstructing the Balance of Power: Two Traditions of Thought”, pp. 87-100, and
Friedrich Kratochwil, “Regimes, Interpretation and the ‘Science’ of Politics,” Millennium, vol. 17, no. 2
(Summer 1988), pp. 263-84, especially p. 272.
41
Richard Ashley, “The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward a Critical Social Theory of
International Politics”, Alternatives, vol. 12, no. 4 (1987), p. 418.
42
David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), pp.
179, 180.
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“powerful” analogy constituted a means to stimulate wide-spread approval, of US foreign
policy in those European circles that usually are rather critical of it. Second, rites can also
empower agents. In this case, the power of rites is impersonal, because it is not originating
in an actor. But at the same time, it is not objective or natural like the power of hurricanes, for instance, because rites are not powerful independent of agents. The symbol of
Munich can be intentionally invoked by actors, but it keeps a particular hold on Western
political discourse and thus also on policy-making since 1938. Its power is constantly
renewed or shaken by more recent applications. The rallying power of a national flag can
be used by politicians, but the symbol escapes their control; it “governs” independently
of particular intentions, albeit not independent of the practices and the meaning given to
it by the group of actors involved.
Ashley derives such a form of impersonal power from the work of Pierre Bourdieu.
Fundamental here is Ashley’s introduction of Bourdieu’s concept of “doxa”. Bourdieu
distinguished doxa both from orthodoxy as a kind of established truth or common wisdom
and from heterodoxy, which is its official contender. The two latter concepts refer to the
universe of open discourse and argument and depend on each other. Doxa, on the other
hand, refers to the self-evident background of the established order on which the contest
between orthodoxy and heterodoxy is articulated. Even though the realm of doxa is necessary to set the stage, its contingency is not acknowledged. “Every established order tends
to produce the naturalisation of its own arbitrariness.” Writes Bourdieu:
in the extreme case, that is to say, when there is a quasi-perfect correspondence between
the objective order and the subjective principles of organization (as in ancient societies)
the natural and social world appears as self-evident. This experience we shall call
doxa… The instruments of knowledge of the world are in this case (objectively) political instruments which contribute to the reproduction of the social world by producing
immediate adherence to the world, seen as self-evident and undisputed, of which they
are the product and of which they reproduce the structures in a transformed form… The
theory of knowledge is a dimension of political theory because the specific symbolic
power to impose the principles of the construction of reality - in particular, social
reality, is a major dimension of political power.43
The domain of doxa represents a system of normalised recognition through continuous
practice that ceases to work (and incidentally also to exist) exactly at the moment when
conscious legitimation is needed. Thus, Ashley locates impersonal empowering explicitly
at an intersubjective level, where knowledge is constituted, and acting and thinking space
defined. There roles and practices are constructed, and they operate then systematically
and nonintentionally, that is “naturally”, not only to exclude issues from the agenda, but
also to prevent the very definition of such issues and their possible solutions. “The
political power of hegemony… is neither a ‘power over’ other actors nor a ‘power to’
43
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp.
164, 165.
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obtain some consciously deliberated future end among ends. The power of hegemony resides precisely in the capacity to inhabit a domain of doxa and to competently perform
the rituals of power naturalized therein.”44
We can use a critique of Neorealism as an illustration of Ashley’s “dissident” power
analysis. The latter would attempt to counter the closing-off procedures that the move
toward Neorealism “effected” in the face of the increasing dissolution of the discipline’s
boundaries in the 1970s. The qualitative difference between international and domestic
politics, that is, anarchy and sovereignty, was already attacked by (1) the older behavioral
claim that methodologically the study of internal and external policies is alike, (2) by the
rising importance of transnational actors that undermine the concept of sovereignty, and
(3) by bureaucratic politics that question the notion of a unified or rational actor. Waltz’
reformulation of Realism restored the categorical dichotomy and thus provided the discipline with a defining boundary. Waltz’ defense contained the off-loading of transnational
and infranational phenomena into the area of foreign policy analysis (hence political
science), thus preserving a systemic Realism. Its effect, or its power, derived from its
ability to rescue IR as a respectable and legitimate discipline; respectable through its
commitment to economic methodology, and legitimate because it could not be “reduced”
to any other field in the social sciences’ division of labor. Waltz’ Neorealism was so
“powerful”, not because its parsimonious balance of power theory could uncover more
things about the real world than we knew before, but because it mobilised the scientific
community’s longing for a paradigmatic core. By preempting specific heterodox views,
Waltz’ discourse prepared the ground on which the legitimate debate of the discipline
between Neorealism and Neoinstitutionalism could take place. In other words, it did not
provide a convincing answer to the anomalies of the discipline, but was successful in
mobilising established conceptions of the legitimate way to approach them.45
Consequently, this strong metatheoretical outlook of poststructuralism is at once the
historical symptom of a discipline in crisis, and the necessary outlook of an explanatory
framework that seeks to disclose knowledge trapped in the positivist rational choice
discourse of Neorealism.
Since the authors of this third meaning of structural power have themselves
departed explicitly from the choice-theoretical basis of Neorealism, what is at issue here
is not whether these structural approaches of power can be integrated into Neorealism;
rather it is whether they are internally coherent and whether their insights are necessarily
linked to a power-analysis.
44
Richard Ashley, “Imposing International Purpose: Notes on a Problematic of Governance”, in ErnstOtto Czempiel and James Rosenau (eds), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges, p. 269.
45
See Kenneth Waltz’s works, Theory of International Politics, and especially “A Response to My
Critics”, where Waltz does not respond to the move to the metatheoretical level on which Ashley’s critique
is pitched.
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2. A power analysis with a dyad of concepts
This final section deals with the fallacies inherent in possible overextensions of the
concept of power and proposes a solution that distinguishes between two concepts, power
and governance, that must be put together in a comprehensive power analysis.
2.1. Overload fallacies of structural power
The three following fallacies illustrate the impossibility of limiting power phenomena to
a single concept at either the agent or the structure level. The first fallacy is trying to
extend an agent concept to cover all power phenomena. This problem is linked to the
concept of human agency itself. Following Dennis Wrong, the fallacy consists of not
distinguishing between intentional and non-intentional action. By failing to make this
distinction (and by not reserving the exercise of power for intentional and responsible
action), one inevitably makes the effect of power coincide with human action. For this
reason Wrong limits the concept of power to the capacity to produce intended effects
including unintended, but foreseen, side-effects.46 Unforeseen effects are considered
important for any analysis in social science and part of a more general concept of
influence, but are not generally considered relevant to the concept of power as such. Yet,
foresight does not seem to be a good criterion for the distinction of power relations from
general agency because it would result in giving too much emphasis to the viewpoint of
those who exercise power as opposed to those who have to bear its consequences.47
Morriss’s argument remains valid at this point; if one conceives of power as a way of
“effecting,” as Wrong also does, then unintended effects must be included.48
Thus, the initial problem remains: how to avoid collapsing all power phenomena into
agency? Lukes, aware of this difficulty and the shortcomings of intentionalist approaches,
starts by saying that the “effecting” must be considered significant for a particular reason
(and is therefore contestable). His distinctive criterion is not intention and its link to
responsibility, but “interest-furthering”. Yet this approach points to the second possible
fallacy of structural power as impersonal empowering: pluralists refuse it because it would
entail the “power-as-benefit fallacy”. Deducing power from positive effects produces the
anomaly of the free rider, whose interests are furthered by the system but who remains
46
Dennis H. Wrong, Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 3-5.
See also J.M. Barbalet, “Power, Structural Resources, and Agency,” Current Perspectives in Social
Theory 8 (1987), pp. 1-24, in particular p. 6.
48
One of the reasons for the reluctance to incorporate nonintentional power is the relationship between
the concepts of power and responsibility in agent-oriented theories. It seems, however, to be going too far to
conclude that since it is difficult to assess responsibility in cases where unintended effects have been
produced, such effects must necessarily be excluded from power analyses. The extent of responsibility must
be judged case by case. For both the intended and unintended consequences of action, the capacity to effect
an outcome (i.e. power) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for an actor’s responsibility. See chap. 3.
47
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
nevertheless at its mercy. It seems odd to describe the free rider as necessarily powerful.49
Even more carefully developed individualist approaches suffer from this shortcoming.
Morriss, for instance, explicitly attempts to include such impersonally produced effects.
For this purpose, he introduces the notion of passive power to account for the cases where
we “don’t want to differentiate between people who do get something and people who can
get it, but we want to distinguish these people from those who cannot get it.” Morriss then
defines passive power as being “passive in both senses: no choice is involved because you
could not intervene to prevent the outcome occurring; it would come about in spite of
anything you might do.”50 This illustrates the benefit-fallacy: deduce power from
rewards.51 Morriss accepts the charge, yet considers it beside the point:
There is no need to claim that because someone benefits she must cause her good
fortune, nor that she can control it. All one need do is note that a status quo that
systematically benefits certain people (as Polsby agrees it does) is relevant in itself. (…)
Yet if the social system performs in such a way as systematically to advantage some
individuals or groups, it certainly seems odd not to take account of this.52
I agree that it would be a great mistake in an empirical analysis of a specific outcome to
neglect how the structural bias on the normative, institutional, or economic level affects
the very way power relations are built up, conceived, understood, and decided. But why
must we take account of it by integrating it into the concept of power as such, especially
if we refuse, as Morriss does, the argument of power as a subcategory of cause?
Impersonal effect or structural bias may be part of any power analysis, but cannot be part
of the concept of power if the latter is actor-based, as in the case of the pluralists’
relational conception or Morriss’s dispositional one.
The third fallacy represents a mirror image of the first one, namely, a form of
structural reductionism. All the approaches considered so far take into account the policycontingency framework, or whatever the authors prefer to call the contextual part of their
analysis. The notion of impersonal power seems to require a founding outside the agent,
not within the person’s intention (in the narrow behavioral approach) or action (in the
wider individualist approach). This has provoked major critiques. By not sufficiently
stressing the fundamental agent reference of power, so runs the criticism, the concept of
power becomes either synonymous with structural constraint, thus rendering structural
power a contradiction in terms, or else it becomes a rather amorphous all-encompassing
concept like social control.53
49
Polsby, Community Power and Political Theory, p. 208.
Morriss, Power, p.100. In both quotes the emphasis is original.
51
See also Brian Barry, “The Uses of ‘Power’,” in Brian Barry, Democracy, Power and Justice, p. 315.
52
Peter Morriss, Power, pp. 106, 105.
53
For the first charge, see Steven Lukes, Essays in Social Theory, p. 9; and for the second, Dennis
Wrong, Power: its Forms, Bases, and Uses, p. 252.
50
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European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Structural power
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This critique stems from writers whose concept of power rests on a rather strong concept of agency, as, for instance, in the agency assumptions of rational-choice theories (desires, beliefs, preferences, rationality, choices) or, in a different vein, as in the case of
Lukes, for whom power becomes attached to personal autonomy and the moral discourse
of freedom and justice. Both approaches retain, on the other hand, a very thin concept of
structure. Obviously, if structures are just seen as constraints, then structural power is a
contradiction in terms. But this is due not to a supposedly inherent agency reference for
power phenomena, but to an insufficient conceptualisation of structures.
The solution must include an idea of structures as not constraining but enabling or
facilitating. In one attempt to rescue a concept of structural power that is not a
contradiction in terms, Hugh Ward distinguishes between power derived from two different kinds of resources.54 Some resources are personal in the sense that they activate
individual-specific relations. Other resources, however, are due to a general setting that
makes no distinction among agents from the same category. These structural resources enable actors or facilitate their actions. They thus differ from personal resources, and control
over them can be called, as Ward suggests, structural power.
This reconceptualisation of structure is still unsatisfactory. Ward uses the perfect
market as his model. The market model can account for the enabling feature of structures
only through the provision of resources that agents can use to alter their abilities. The
assumption of perfect competition never calls into question the origin and maintenance,
that is, reproduction of market positions. The strength of economic analysis is its understanding of the market dynamics of the established actors. It is still not convincing for the
explanation of growth, economic development, or the dynamics of creating competitive
advantages. Yet, once one accepts that structures are inherently biased for this reason and
tend to reproduce such biases, it becomes clear that one must conceive structures more
dynamically. One must in fact expand the small structuralist account of a logic of the
market not reducible to agency to one of markets as institutions that work with and
through a specific set of intersubjective rules and practices. These structures constitute
power practices that are continually allocating and reallocating agents to categories that
are differently affected by the working of the bias. After all, not everyone is, say, an
employer, and not everyone can or is empowered to be. Whereas agent concepts are compelled simply to treat this as fate, structural constraint, or (poor) luck, it seems more
reasonable to set up a power analysis in which empirical scrutiny determines whether it
is in fact a question of luck or power.
Thus, whereas Morriss’s solution, passive power, was questionable due to its attempt
to integrate bias into the concept of power, Ward’s proposal is insufficient because it
leaves the systematic furthering of specific interests out of the entire power analysis by
reducing impersonal empowering to the control of preexisiting structural resources.
54
Hugh Ward, “Structural Power - a Contradiction in Terms?” Political Studies 35 (4/1987), pp. 593-610.
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DOI: 10.2870/47026
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
2.2. Power analysis between agent power and impersonal governance
There is a seemingly easy theoretical solution to this problem. Not one, but two concepts
are necessary to account for the range of power phenomena, namely (agent-)power and
governance. This solution avoids concealing the agent-structure tension within the concept,
as Morriss does, or reducing empowering to an objective and general constraint/opportunity, as happens with Ward. This implies a shift away from an economic to an
intersubjective and constructivist approach, but the substantial problem of the agentstructure divide remains.
The choice of using “power” as the agent referent of power phenomena and
“governance” as the intersubjective referent is conventional. One could have chosen either
to use another set of words or to follow Michel Foucault and reserve the concept of power
for the impersonal part of power phenomena.55 My decision is to follow more common
(English-language) usage and reserve the concept of power for the agent level. In such
cases, power concepts have often been accompanied by more impersonal concepts taken
from the family of authority.56
This dyad of concepts needs a particular theory of agency and structure. With regard
to agent power, it requires a dispositional conceptualisation of power as a capacity of
effecting, that is transforming, resources, which affects social relationships.57 Using
power as a dispositional concept can account for the first two meanings of structural
power.
Governance can then be defined as the capacity of intersubjective practices to effect.
This includes both the social construction of options that is at the heart of the Gramscian
analysis, and the routine mobilising of bias that affects social relationships, more present
in poststructuralist writings. For all their differences, they both conceive cooperation not
just as a phenomenon of an instrumentalist relation, where one looks for the best way to
“cooperate under anarchy” or where the regimes, as an outcome of this instrumentalist
cooperation, influence the brute clash of forces beyond the resulting invisible hand of the
balance of power. Order is conceived of not only as the result of individual forces of will,
but also as the prior constitution of these forces. The structured international realm is also
always a form of society/order/system in which agents are constituted - and not just the
other way around. This could be exemplified by the way international discourse on
development and its agencies have constructed the particular problematique of develop-
55
The French language distinguishes between puissance (latin potentia) and pouvoir (latin potestas), where
the first term refers to a potential or ability and the second to an act. Moreover, Pouvoir is also used to denote
centralized power or government. Foucault’s insistence on the diffusion of power is explicable as a
countermove to a traditional conception of sovereign (i.e. centralized) power.
56
See especially Steven Lukes, “Power and authority,” In T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet, eds., A History
of Sociological Analysis (London: Heinemann, 1979), pp. 633-76.
57
For a recent and similar definition of power, see Heikki Patomäki, “Concepts of ‘Action’, ‘Structure’
and ‘Power’ in ‘Critical Social Realism’: A Positive and Reconstructive Critique”, Journal for the Theory of
Social Behaviour, vol. 21, no. 2 (1991), p. 234.
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Structural power
119
ment and the so-called Third Worlder who needs to be developed.58 It is then under this
recognised identity that these agents are empowered or disempowered to take part in
international relations.
Poststructuralists would insist that governance for this reason is not necessarily
something material to be attached to some persons and not to others, but a diffused
process passing through agents.59 It is reproduced and realised via practices, habits,
dispositions, and sometimes even through the construction of the agents’s identity (see
Figure 6.1, Figure 6.2). Therefore, one must resist the attempt to invariably “individualise”
the origins of power, the genesis of the produced effects. This individualisation - necessary
for blaming agents - begins to appear deceptive when one analyses governance. There the
discourse of individual blame is simply misplaced.60
Allowing for a wide approach to power phenomena does not, however, entail acceptance of all the power approaches presented above. The proposed solution explicitly
excludes power analyses that argue for a restriction to an agent-based power concept, for
they are compelled to avoid the power-as-benefit fallacy by introducing not a second
concept of the power family but a random concept: luck. Keith Dowding’s rational-choice
approach to power has gone so far as to acknowledge the systematic interest-furthering
that pushed Morriss to conceive of passive power. Quite consistently, he must then treat
it as systematic luck. This concept refers to the privileges and advantages that stem from
the social position of specific actors, but for which they apparently did nothing.61 By
reducing systematic bias to a question of luck, this approach leaves out of the picture the
daily practices of agents that help to reproduce the very system and positions from which
these advantages of the lucky are derived. This means that the social reproduction can be
understood as a ritual of power that not only rests on those who benefit from the system
but also needs all those who, via their conscious or unconscious practices, help to sustain
it. There is no prime mover. Power lies both in the relational interaction of agents and in
the systematic rule that results from the consequences of their actions. To quote Foucault,
“People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what
they don’t know is what what they do does.”62 Routine actions can constitute rituals of
power that suggest the realm of the possible. They construct (and deconstruct) the horizon
of the thinkable and feasible that continuously enframes agency and preempts or co-opts
58
Marc DuBois, “The Governance of the Third World: A Foucauldian Perspective on Power Relations
in Development”, Alternatives, vol. 16, no. 1 (1991), pp. 1-30.
59
This applies for both of Michel Foucault’s later periods. See for the 1970s, Surveiller et punir.
Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), pp. 31-34; and for the 1980s, James Bernauer and David
Rasmussen, eds., The Final Foucault (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), in particular pp. 18-20.
60
For a critique of this unwelcome “interference of conspiracy theory,” see Ole Wæver, Tradition and
Transgression in International Relations: A Post-Ashleyan Position, Working Paper no. 24/1989 (Copenhagen:
Center for Conflict and Peace Research, 1989), p. 23.
61
Keith Dowding, Rational Choice and Political Power, p. 137.
62
Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd
ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 187.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
Figure 6.2 A dyadic conceptualisation of power phenomena
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
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Structural power
121
alternative discourses and practices.
Power analysis as the comprehensive account of power phenomena must call into
question the relationship between the different forms of power and of governance.
By focusing on power, one needs, for instance, to integrate an analysis of governance
via the social patterning of structures. Social interactions mobilise rules for agenda-setting
that privilege specific agents, that is, the agent’s actual power in a bargain is fostered by
the system’s governance. This is done neither through direct bargaining nor via indirect
institutional agenda-setting. Only in this way can the power of the German Bundesbank
in the above-mentioned example be fully understood. Thus with a dyad of concepts, one
can account for Strange’s concept of structural power, which she sees as more than the
“power to set the agenda of discussion or to design (in American phraseology) the
international ‘regime’ of rules and customs.”63
On the other hand, by focusing on governance, one needs to conceptualise power via
the way the identities of agents are constantly redefined. This Foucauldian theme about
the intersubjective constitution of agency might appear farfetched in times of stability. Yet
in periods of apparent transition and of an elusive agent and power, Foucault’s ideas might
be particularly interesting. Just as in Foucault’s research program about the constitution
of the modern self, so in international theory, there is a research program about
contemporary agency. Moreover, it seems that (1) the constitution of firms, individuals,
and nations (not states), for example, as international agents, (2) their definition, and (3)
their recognition are resisted by the (realist) international community. Neorealism’s
inherent conservative bias can at times be healthy but is more and more resented as a
disciplinary ritual whose effect consists of marginalising alternative thought and politics.
In other words, in times of an “international” apparently in transition, the theory most
resistant to the analysis of change predicts as most probable an eternal return of anarchy.
It thereby counters the constitution of recognised international agency and thus the latter’s
power. An analysis of this doxic power of Neorealism can identify this discourse, its bearers (academics and statesmen) and bring them under a general power analysis.
2.3. Consequences for the study of power phenomena in contemporary IR and
IPE
This reconceptualisation of power and governance substantiates already existing critiques
of Neorealism. Through a conceptual analysis of power that integrates power and
governance, Neorealism’s lack of historicity and its consequent legitimation of status quo
power relations can be exposed.
To illustrate the first point, let us again take Krasner’s concept of meta-power.
Krasner conceptualises regimes as an influence on outcomes, that is, as something linked
to the power base, but with a time lag. In this way, he used regimes and normative struc-
63
Susan Strange, “The persistent myth of lost hegemony”, International Organization, vol. 41, no. 4
(Autumn 1987), p. 565.
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
tures as possible resources of power and their potential control as a form of power,
namely meta-power. In this context the normative structure becomes an object, similar to
material sources, on which to dwell.64 This reduction of regimes to objects makes it
possible to analyze the structural environment as given constraints and opportunities, and
not as something that is being continually reshaped by the historically constituted and
intersubjectively reproduced societal biases.
In a similar vein, Waltz’s formulation practically rules out change at the structural
level. By limiting structural change to the first level (anarchy vs. hierarchy) and by
defining anarchy as the lack of international government, the model constructs a thinking
space for change in only one direction. There is change if and only if power becomes
concentrated in the hands of one actor and if and only if this hegemony produces a unique
sovereignty. This leaves untouched the constitution of the realm we take for granted as
international and its significant changes.65 As the preceding discussion has shown, to
account for governance asks, however, for a focus on the social construction of such
relations and, indeed, of the identity of the relevant actors.66 Thus, a dyadic power
analysis will inevitably problematise the basic anarchy/sovereignty distinction on which
Neorealism is built.67 In response to Waltz’s poor account of change, recent attempts
have tried to integrate change at the second tier of Waltz’s Neorealism.68 Yet, as long
as they leave the historicity of the formal dichotomy of anarchy and sovereignty
untouched, circularly defined and reified, this project does not remove the basic
shortcoming. With many above-mentioned authors who conceptualised structural power,
a dyadic power analysis points to a nonformalistic understanding of an international
system of rule beyond the “anarchy problematique”.
The static concept of structure in economic approaches also explains why Krasner and
Caporaso, although referring to the same literature, develop two different concepts of
structural power that derive from the ambiguity in Bacharach and Baratz’s approach.
Krasner, starting from an intentional choice-theoretical approach sees today regimes as
given and conceives of power relations only where intentional attempts to change an
existing regime can be detected: the Third World against the international liberal regime
(assuming such a thing exists). Yet, regimes are not only a means (as for Krasner) for
power relations but are, as Caporaso shows, in fact “effecting” exactly such power
64
In other words, the reduction of regimes to objects clashes with an implicit shift to an intersubjective
ontology, see Kratochwil and Ruggie, “International Organization...”, pp. 764-65.
65
For a criticism of Waltz’s neorealism as unable to account for the change from the medieval to the
modern system, see the writings of John G. Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity:
Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” in Keohane, Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 131-57; and also in “Territoriality
and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations”, International Organization, vol. 47, no.
1 (Winter 1993), pp. 139-74.
66
See Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It”, p. 397.
67
For a thorough appraisal of the concept of “sovereignty,” see the writings of R.B.J. Walker, e.g. “State
Sovereignty and the Articulation of Political Space/Time, pp. 445-61.
68
See Barry Buzan, Charles Jones and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy.
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Structural power
123
relations. Had Krasner from the beginning of his analysis included a problematisation and
historisation of the impersonally empowered status quo, that is used a dyad of concepts,
this restricted view would not have happened.69 As a result, Krasner’s analysis and
Neorealist power analysis in general itself tend to normalise specific power relations,
namely the unvoiced power of the status quo.
Thus, and this is the second important point, these very practices of power analysis
and power politics are part of an ongoing reshaping and reproduction of legitimate discourses and politics. This implies that the whole power analysis should be conceived of
as an intersubjective one. Individual power, understood as ability, is couched in an
environment that is not just any objective regime or a position in the market/balance of
power, but an intersubjective realm where rituals of power continuously set the stage.
It seems reasonable to expect that this impersonal empowering should be part of any
power-analysis. It could not in fact coherently be part of a choice-theoretical version of
Realism, of an individualist dispositional power approach, or of any approach that
objectivises regimes, balances of power, and/or markets.
Therefore, this power analysis characterised by a dyad of concepts can claim not only
to avoid some traditional logical fallacies of power concepts but also to retain the major
insights present in concepts of structural power. Its task is not to argue that either power
or governance or both are always the most significant criteria for the explanation of an
event. Given particular that are coherent with the foregoing conceptualisation, this is to
be judged empirically case by case. But it makes the claim that conceptualisations that do
not unnecessarily exclude power phenomena from the construction of research hypotheses
should be preferred, because they place fewer constraints on the questions to be asked and
answers to be found in empirical analysis.
3. Conclusion: Purposes and meanings of power and governance
As I have argued, recent concepts of power have endeavored to widen the scope of power
analysis to include the three features we have met in the conceptualisation of structural
power: power as indirect institutional, unintended, or impersonally created effects. These
attempts to use power to account for an international system of governance or hierarchy
or authority highlight the insufficiencies of the concept of anarchy as it is used in
traditional IR and IPE theory. Governance points to the systematic understatement of
effective rule, of authority relations at the international level where the concept of
sovereignty in a system of self-help might not meaningfully matter anymore. This has
profound consequences for the articulation of Neorealist theory. In a system of self-help,
69
For a convincing account of the dynamics of power positions, that accounts for Caporaso’s and
Krasner’s frameworks as different stages of power institutionalisations and struggles, see John Gaventa, Power
and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p.
21.
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Part III. Realist power analysis and its critics
the ruling of the international system is simply the result of the clashing of national
powers. The international order is made out of the hierarchy of state forces. Therefore in
Realist theory, national power(s) become(s) the central variable in explanations. Leaving
the system of self-help to whatever a structured or functionally differentiated system
entails, however, that power alone is no longer able to explain the “logic” of the international system. This is the central insight of regime theory. Yet all the Neorealist extensions
of the concept of power that are aimed at preserving its central explanatory role have been
unsuccessful in integrating important features of a comprehensive power analysis, as
shown with respect to the three meanings of structural power.
Instead of increasingly widening the concept of power, I propose a dyad of concepts,
keeping power as an actor-based dispositional concept and not subsuming governance
under it. Power analysis is about exactly this link between agent capacities and systematic
ruling and cannot be reduced to any of them.
This kind of power analysis prepares the ground for a better understanding of the
dynamics of the international system, the political responsibilities therein, and the possible
places for change. Since it relies also on an impersonal concept of governance, it is,
however, only under severe conditions to be used for the moral purpose of blaming
particular actors. It applies much better to the practical purpose of preparing for
unintended effects and for redefining the borders of the a priori politically feasible. The
basic reason to preserve a widened power analysis is hence the purpose typical for
conceptualisation of power, namely the redefinition of the boundaries of what can be
called a political, i.e. changeable issue. Although the relation between power and
governance is far from explaining every single outcome, it does not exclude power phenomena a priori. Rather, it leaves the assessment of possible short-term and long-term
political action to the empirical case. The governance of the system and its identification
of powers are not taken for granted, but its pattern of change is examined via the longterm strategies that were or were not used to influence it. This power analysis does not
deny a realm of necessity but allows for a wider conception of political action. Particularly
for Realists, who tend to believe that politics is the art of the possible, this power analysis
points to a wider realm of the possible.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Part IV
Neorealist
Power Analysis of
the Second Gulf War
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Table of Contents for Part IV
Introduction to Part IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Chapter 7. Neorealist Power Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. The “logic” of power: “collateral pressure” and “osmosis”
2. Relational “securities” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. Behavioural assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4. Conclusion: Questions of a Neorealist Power-Analysis . . .
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Chapter 8. Origins of the conflict: Power shifts in the Middle Eastern security
complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. A regional hegemonic war in a “unipolar moment” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1. The “freeze-theory” (142); 1.2. The loss of diplomatic freedom? (144); 1.3.
Hegemony on the globe, in the Near East, in the Gulf (145); 1.4. The challenger: a
regional middle power (148); 1.5. The counterforce: the international hegemon (152)
2. Beyond military security: political and financial destabilisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. After 1973: increasing autonomy of the regional security complex (155); 2.2.
Iraq’s fuite en avant (157); 2.3. Oil security (161)
3. Conclusion: The Gulf in search of an equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
129
129
131
132
136
139
141
154
164
Chapter 9. The dynamics of the conflict: overcoming the “Vietnam Syndrome” . . . .
1. The multilateralisation of the conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1. The UN against Iraq (169); 1.2. Forging a coalition (172); 1.3. Shortcircuiting
competing diplomacies (178); 1.4. The domestic front: luring Congress and electoral
cycles (181)
2. Influencing the public opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. Crisis propaganda (183); 2.2. War-news management (185)
3. From the “Rapid Deployment Force” to “Desert Storm” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1. A Strategy of Counterinsurgency (189); 3.2. US strategy from Desert Shield to
Desert Storm (191)
4. Conclusion: The Gulf conflict — unnecessary and inevitable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
166
167
Chapter 10. “War and Change” in the Middle Eastern Security Complex . . . . . . . .
1. A new kind of war for a new kind of security? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1. Future Middle Eastern “Water wars” ? (197); 1.2. A war of space intelligence
and communication (200)
2. Installing a balance of wealth and legitimacy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. Political Order in Changing Security Structures (203); 2.2. The prospects of
democracy (206)
3. A new regional balance of power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1. The institutionalisation of Iraqi political insecurity (208); 3.2. The regional
configuration: the disaggregation of the Arab world (210); 3.3. The central-regional
link (I): proliferation in the Gulf (214); 3.4. The central-regional link (II): US foreign
policy in the Middle East (221)
4. A precedent for conflict management in the “new world order”? . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1. The UN after the Gulf conflict (223); 4.2. Who’s new world order? The trilateral
diplomacy after Kuwait (226)
5. Conclusion: The inconclusive victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
195
195
182
189
193
202
207
223
230
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Introduction to Part IV
The empirical illustration pursues three main aims. First, the application of power concepts
to a particular case is intended to show the theoretically established limits of the
Neorealist concept of power. Thus, in a first step, a Neorealist story of the case will be
constructed, the use of power analysed, its limits assessed (Part IV). Second, wider
concepts of power and a dyadic power analysis will be used to construct a different story
of the case. This story sheds light on the implications both of power for the understanding
of an empirical case, and of the case for the understanding of power in contemporary
international affairs (Part V). This leads to the third and final aim which is to indicate
what cannot be accounted for by a power analysis, however comprehensively conceived
(General conclusion). This is a crucial point of the whole investigation. If one of the
underlying ideas of this thesis is that the economic mode of explanation on which Neorealism is build provides a too narrow picture of power, the second main idea is that even
more satisfactory concepts of power cannot provide a comprehensive explanation. In other
words, power analysis leaves things unexplained; a theory of power is no shorthand for
a social theory.
The two stories should be read with a double reference in mind. On the one hand, Part
V is a critique of power analysis if it is purely individualistic. On the other hand, my own
dyadic conceptualisation reserves an agent concept of power. Hence, Part IV will be at
times shifting between the general Neorealist account and a dispositional concept of agent
power. Although I shall indicate where the two stories part ways, I admit that it is a
problem for exposition. I left the story in the Neorealist account, because I could not
criticise its internal logic, if I started directly with my story. If I presented both
successively, a lot of empirical material would be redundant. Thus I hope the reader will
excuse me and read Part IV with this double context in mind. It will be taken up in the
chapter 15.
The usefulness and limits of the concept and analysis of power will be shown by
means of an empirical illustration. The wording is important. This cannot claim to be a
“case study”, because there is no original empirical material which is presented here for
the first time. Instead, it relies entirely on a critical reading of secondary literature. This
empirical illustration cannot and does not claim to give a comprehensive account of the
origins, dynamics and effects of the last Gulf War. Neither would a Neorealist analyst do.
Since the Middle East is such an intricate subsystem of the global political economy, this
must be left to an internationally informed area specialist.1
The choice of a “typical” case for Neorealism (and Realism), namely the outbreak of
a war, should make it a fair case to judge Neorealism by means of its power analysis. Yet
the different concepts of power and governance make a precisely focused comparison
impossible. The comparison will have to rely on the construction of two different
empirical research programmes and consequently two different stories of the Second Gulf
1
There is already the difficulty with the clear geographical boundary of the area. The English term
“Middle East” comprises the entire Arab world plus Turkey, Iran and Israel. In other words, it refers to what
the French refer to as Maghreb, Machrek, Proche-Orient and Moyen-Orient.
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Part IV. Neorealist Power-Analyses of the Second Gulf War
War. Thus, there cannot be a comparative study where the story comes first, followed by
the relevant questions and an appraisal of the different answers given by the respective
theories.
Neorealist analysis will present a first version of the Second Gulf War. As analysed
in chapter 5, the Neorealist approach not only relies on a specific conceptual definition
of power, but also on particular assumption on the working of power. Thus, before we can
follow the three steps of a security study (and apprehend the role of power therein), the
underlying security and power assumptions need to be specified. These assumptions have
long seemed self-evident to IR scholars, but only if they are explicitly kept in mind does
the articulation of the analysis become coherent.
Since the power analysis which underlies Neorealism is not a comprehensive explanatory framework, a Neorealist account using power needs to be supplemented. I have
chosen to use a regional security account. This does, however, not imply that all which
follows can be imputed to such a regional security analysis. For a hard core structural
Realist, the geopolitical distribution is most prominent in the explanation of outcomes,
whereas a security analysis integrates questions of enmity/amity. Yet, these are part of the
Realist programme and are certainly compatible with, if not underlying, the approaches
by Baldwin, Keohane and Nye. The security analysis proceeds in three steps: the origins
of the conflict (chapter 8) its dynamics and outcomes (chapter 9), and its long-term
security effects (chapter 10).2
2
A short note on wording. In the literature, the last Gulf War is variously named. Since “crisis” is a
central concept in Foreign Policy Analysis, it will be used in its usual sense. The shorthand of the “Gulf War”
will be avoided, since it may conflate with the 1981-1988 Iran-Iraq war which was called “Gulf War” at the
time. The expressions “First Gulf War” and “Second Gulf War” refer respectively to the Iran-Iraq war, and
to the time from the invasion in Kuwait till the armistice. Generically, the wording of “Gulf Conflict” will
be used for the Second war, starting from the invasion, the following crisis, the allied military response and
the post-war diplomacy.
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DOI: 10.2870/47026
7
Neorealist Power Assumptions
1. The “logic” of power: “collateral pressure” and “osmosis”
Three major kinds of power assumptions can be distinguished in Neorealist analysis. The
first is a kind of “objective” power assumptions. It is one of the physicist analogies which
underlie all those Realist discourses that drive for an automatic or mechanistic role of the
distribution of power for the understanding of stasis (equilibrium) and change. This kind
of underlying assumption is necessary especially for a systemic Realist approach, because
it reserves a special and primordial place to the so-called “structural” level independent
of unit-level intentions. Automatism gives Neorealism its explanatory power, that is, it is
the base from which determinacy in its explanation derives. Since some automatic
adjustments of power can be anticipated, they should be the foundation of the national
security analysis and foreign policy elaborations, traditionally called the “national interest.”
The policy message is clear: omitting the logic of power can be suicidal.
Two objective power assumptions can be distinguished. The first is mostly used in
contexts of territorial adjustments, that is strictly military power. It can be called
“collateral pressure”.1 The image is the following. Imagine a recipient of power (country)
in a flexible container. Its internal pressure (power) pushes collaterally on other recipients.
If the collateral pressure is higher than the one of these other bodies, then the flexible
container will expand - exactly till its internal pressure (declining via its expansion) is
equilibrated by the pressures around (mounting via their contraction). In Realist terms this
means that borders and territories will be readjusted until national powers (calculated
implicitly as the ratio of power to territory) are balanced.
1
This refers to an idea in some ways reminiscent, but different from the “lateral pressure” model
originated by North and Choucri, and developed by Richard Ashley. See Richard K. Ashley, The Political
Economy of War and Peace: The Sino-Soviet-American Triangle and the Modern Security Problematique
(London: Pinter, 1980).
129
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Thus, change in the sense of territorial expansion via collateral pressure also implies
a decline of the internal power pressure. This implicit assumption now underlies most
prominently US critiques of the “Imperial overstretch”, that is the tendency of Empires
to overextend and thus lose power, to implode, until a just equilibrium between power and
Empire (territorial extension) is found.
However, this implies that pressure and power can be used interchangeably when in
fact they should not be. Imperial overstretch need not diminish power as such, but through
increasing extension, might only diminish the pressure of power. Even within the
argument of Hegemonic Stability Theory, a hegemonic decline does not necessarily mean
a decline in the hegemon’s power, but rather a decline in its pressure, which, in real
political terms, means expansionism. The hegemonic decline thesis must therefore show
that the end of expansion is not a sign of constant power whose pressure is eventually
equilibrated, but actually represents a decline in power. This is, of course, very
hypothetical, because the whole argument derives from assumptions (about power) and not
from empirical tests.
The second “objective” power assumption is used in those situations where no territorial adjustments seem necessary for a state to expand. The flexible outer skin of the
body becomes in fact permeable. Here, the pressure is equilibrated not by expanding
bodies, but by letting their contained items pass the border. This means that whenever
there appears to be a “power vacuum”, it inevitably asks to be filled by the strongest
actor, often in fact called “power” as a shorthand. Expansion is here the result of a
diminuition of the power-level in the environment. The main metaphor is the natural
tendency of liquids to equal their levels in contiguous recipients. One of the most literary
(and powerful) examples of such an argument can be found in the article of “Mr.X”,
published originally in 1947. George F. Kennan did not believe in a military or territorial
threat of the USSR. He was rather afraid that the long “shades of the Kremlin” would
effect resignation and self-surrender in Central and Western Europe:
Its political action is a fluid stream which moves constantly, whenever it is permitted
to move, toward a given goal. Its main concern is to make sure that it has filled every
nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power.2
Following this image, the assumption could be called the “osmosis of power”. It is
fundamental for all those Balance of Power theories which postulate an automatic adjustment process — and which have spurred the most sarcastic criticisms (see chapter 4). But
no Neorealist would rely only on this systemic assumption. There are more “unit-level”
assumptions that retranslate this general tendency in behavioural terms.
2
George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”, in his American Diplomacy 1900-1950 (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 118.
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2. Relational “securities”
An additional assumption is more subjective. International anarchy signifies a constant
perception of insecurity on the level of international actors. This is considered a point of
instability. Consequently, Neorealist analysis is based on the dynamic assumption that
actors have a drive to acquire security, which first and foremost means survival. Since war
is the biggest threat to survival, the achievement of military security is, so Realism argues,
the bases of any national interest. Indeed, the ultimate primacy of military factors is based
on their potential to “quickly and decisively dominate outcomes”.3 But as argued in Part
III, survival or security can only in particular consequences be reduced to military means.
Hence, Barry Buzan in particular has widened the concept of security in its definition
and its scope. Although he does not explicitly state it, he historicises the otherwise too
general concept of security. Historicisation means here the observer’s attempt to derive
the content of “security” from an empirical awareness of those issues where international
actors act as if security were at stake. This changes over time. Thus, security should be
seen in its specific historical context. As a result of today’s global political economy, he
distinguishes five different fields of security.
Military security concerns the two-level interplay of armed offensive and defensive
capabilities of states, and states’ perceptions of each other’s intentions. Political security
concerns the organizational stability of states, systems of government, and the ideologies
that give them legitimacy. Economic security concerns access to the resources, finance
and markets necessary to sustain acceptable levels of welfare and state power. Societal
security concerns the abilities of society to reproduce their traditional patterns of
language, culture, association, and religious and national identity and custom within
acceptable conditions for evolution. Environmental security concerns the maintenance
of the local and planetary biosphere as the essential support system on which all other
human enterprises depend. These five sectors do not operate in isolation from another.
Each defines a focal point within the security problematique, and a way of ordering
priorities, but all are woven together in a strong web of linkages.4
This is a very concise synthesis of a Realist Interdependentist approach. Although
Keohane and Nye reorganised the field around a new definition of power and Buzan
around a new approach to security, they both overlap in several respects.
Firstly, Keohane and Nye derived their concept of power from two kinds of “interdependence”, vulnerability and sensibility, where power came to mean the control of
resources that could (via interdependence) significantly affect the other actor. Their
general argument was that with rising interdependence, the fields in which power could
3
See respectively: Robert Keohane & Joseph Nye jr. Power and Interdependence. World Politics in
Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977); and Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, Pierre Lemaitre, Elzbieta Tromer
and Ole Wæver, The European Security Order Recast. Scenarios for the Post-Cold War Era (London and
New York: Pinter Publishers, 1990), pp. 4, 5.
4
Barry Buzan, “New patterns of global security in the twenty-first century”, International Affairs
(London), vol. 67, no. 3 (1991), p. 433.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
be exercised expanded. Buzan’s approach, although coined in security terms, derives from
this same apprehension of interdependence. Unwittingly, his definitions of security are all
coined in “power from interdependence” terms. Military security derives from interdependence in survival and focuses on the means (power resources) necessary to achieve it.
Political security focuses on the mutual interdependence for the organisational capacity
(power) to pursue (centralised, aggregated) politics. Economic security is understood in
a rather typical neomercantilist way as being about the control of access or denial to
resources (power) necessary to sustain wealth and state (political and military) power.
Societal security concerns the “abilities” (power) of a society to sustain self-reproduction,
and finally environmental security is the control over the very possibility of action, in
particular local or future action.
Secondly, once these different sources of insecurity are acknowledged, this is linked
to an actor-centred analysis that apprehends which actor controls what set of resources that
can influence the interdependent security in different sectors. Typically, Realism
aggregated the sources to an “overall” power assessment of actors. As we have already
seen in Baldwin’s approach and in the Interdependence debate, this has been criticised for
the lacking “fungibility” of power. Consequently, not linear aggregation, but linkage
becomes the way to comprehensively apprehend an actor’s power.
Thus, the stress on relational security carries no further information then the stress on
a relational concept of power. Both assess inductively the historical contingency of
power.5 It may be that the stress on security makes the double analogy with a neoclassical
economic approach clearer: it is both between money and power, and between overall
utility and the National Interest understood as security. It shows why there has been a
widespread tendency to consider power both as a means and as an end of foreign policy:
it is a means to achieve security, but security itself is defined in terms of power. In an
attempt to avoid tautology, at this point, Realism switches back and forth between this
unit-level analysis and the systemic level, where an equilibrium of power implies security.
To summarise, the subjective power assumption stresses the aims of policy actions
(under anarchy) and the points of equilibrium, i.e. stability. It thereby provides both the
individual motives for action and the overall framework for understanding the action’s
effects. This first subjective assumption can now be supplemented by specific behavioural
assumptions.
3. Behavioural assumptions
To recapitualte, Realism is characterised by the idea that as long as there is a perceived
gap between the actual power of actors and their control of a corresponding section of
world politics (via direct influence like territorial occupations or via indirect control of
valuable resources), readjustments will continuously hamper the system’s stability. What
5
See also Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, p. 64.
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“corresponding” in fact means is empirically and historically checked by the outcomes of
contests, including war. This assumption is said to derive not from an abstract theory, but
from the analyses of crises and wars where states have behaved and conceived their
behaviour exactly on these grounds. It is an empirical generalisation — a matter of fact,
as it were.
Two behavioural patterns (at the “unit-level”) derive from this, one of individual and
one of collective action. The assumption about individual action is partly concerned with
the reasons for the individual or state change of power, but more importantly with the
motivations to put power changes into practice. At this point the choice-theoretical
formulation of Neorealism translates the assumption of “osmosis” into individual action.
There exist at least two versions of it. They reflect the two slightly different rationalist
bases upon which Neorealism rests, one more objectivist, and one more intentionalist.
Following the more objectivist choice-theoretical formulation, Robert Gilpin argues
that, as long as the expected costs are lower than the expected benefits, states are
motivated to expand territorially, economically, and politically.
2. A state will attempt to change the international system if the expected benefits exceed
the expected costs (i.e. if there is an expected net gain).
3. A state will seek to change the international system through territorial, political, and
economic expansion until the marginal costs of further change are equal to or greater
than the marginal benefits.6
This corresponds to the basic rationalist account of deterrence which is said to function
whenever the possible gain from an attack is outweighed by the expected penalty. The
penalty is the product of the highest sanction weighted by the probability of its application. Thus, even though the probability of the use of nuclear weapons is relatively low,
its sanction is so inconceivably high that deterrence works. Hence, deterrence applies, if7:
VFS = expected final state,
VSQ = the status quo,
S = sanction, P = probability.
In other words, it is a cost-benefit formulation of the received Realist idea that power
expands till it finds another matching power — which was the central idea of US
containment policies after World War II.
6
See hypotheses 2 and 3 of Robert Gilpin's version of Hegemonic Stability Theory in his War and
Change in World Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 10 and developed in
chapters 2 and 3.
7
For the different equations of deterrence, see Jean-Louis Gergorin & Marisol Touraine, Stratégie et
Relations Internationales. De la guerre froide à la multipolarité (Paris: Fondation Nationale des Sciences
Politiques, Polycopié 1982-1983), pp. 161-164.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Following the more intentionalist and interactionist Neorealist approach, the
behavioural assumption concentrates on the pursuit of security. “The pursuit of security”,
more extensively conceived, then becomes the reformulated utility-function of the
rationalist approach upon which Neorealism rests. It replaces the concept of national
interest. Since traditionally the national interest was understood in terms of power, we first
have to assess the relationship between relational power and security thus understood.
In the case of security, the discussion is about the pursuit of freedom from threat. When
this discussion is in the context of the international system, security is about the abilities
of states and societies to maintain their independent identity and their functional
integrity. In seeking security, state and society are sometimes in harmony with each
other, sometimes opposed. Its bottom line is about survival, but it also reasonably
includes a substantial range of concern about the conditions of existence.8
Buzan’s concept of security has two characteristics. First, security means defence from
vulnerability. Vulnerability applies whenever an actor does not have what is seen as
adequate control over those resources which at that specific historical point in time are
recognised as being linked to security. Vulnerabilities are thus inextricably linked to the
historically contingent fields of security. Integrating the transnationalisation of politics,
vulnerabilities apply not only to the external defence of a billiard ball, but also to the
socio-political cohesion of a state. The government is sandwiched between external and
domestic claims. If these claims have an effect on the government’s security, then Buzan
speaks of threats, the second characteristic of security. Such threats are not always
international. They can arise also from domestic actors, in particular in societal security.
In a power-centred approach to International Relations, they enter the stage only to the
extent that actions by foreign actors, whether transnational or government, are perceived
as indirect threats pertaining to domestic vulnerabilities.
This reworking of security as a combination of given vulnerabilities and perceived
threats leads to a relational and situational concept of security. It is relational, because the
concept “vulnerability” refers to distribution of capacities in a way which makes one
actor’s position precarious because of potential sanctions or threats from others.
Vulnerabilities refer to the insufficient potential of actors to defend themselves from
possible threat. Expressed in relational power terms, this means that an actor is dependent
on another’s capacities to assure the pursuit of his interests. Vulnerability is asymmetrical
interdependence that can be exploited. This is Keohane & Nye’s rationalist reworking of
power as a relational concept. It is situational, because threats depend on the immediate
environment within which the actor finds himself. Once again expressed in power terms,
the threat capacity of an actor or its defence from threats derives from the control over
8
Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold
War Era, 2nd ed (New York et al.: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 18-19.
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resources which effects the interests, i.e. as used here, the security, of other actors
themselves characterised by a specific set of vulnerabilities.
Insecurity reflects a combination of threats and vulnerabilities, and the two cannot
meaningfully be separated. If Poland is thought to be historically insecure, then not only
must its vulnerabilities in terms of size, economic underdevelopment, political instability
and indefensible boundaries be taken into account but also the threats posed to it by
powerful, expansionist neighbours on either side … The distinction between threats and
vulnerabilities points to a key divide in security policy, namely that states can seek to
reduce their insecurity either by reducing their vulnerability or by preventing or
lessening threats.9
In a rationalist approach, we have thus replaced the pursuit of the national interest as the
main utility function by the pursuit of a policy to reduce vulnerability and lessen or
prevent threats to achieve security. As shown above, the understanding of vulnerability
and threats are inextricably linked to a relational concept of power.10 It follows that
security policy, expressed in power terms, must aim at enhancing the control over those
resources that historically and situationally affect the actors’ interests, that is security.
Security policy means freedom from threat through the enhancement of power as it is
defined by the historical and the geopolitical context, and exercised via external, internal
and transnational channels.
In this respect, a security-centred approach corresponds to the above-mentioned idea
of Robert Gilpin, who speaks of a drive for “military, political and economic expansion”,
as long as others do not counteract. Yet, security analysis à la Buzan integrates more
factors than balance of power theory. It coincides here with Stephen Walt’s “balance of
threats”, where the balance of power theory is supplemented with a behavioural
assumption: it is not the enhancement of power which triggers behaviour, but the
perception of threats. Stephen Walt argues that threats are defined by the amount of power
(conceived as capabilities), its offensive character (geared at specific vulnerabilities), and
the intentions of its holder.11 If Gilpin’s description gives the general rule, the intentional
Neorealist approach provides the necessary link form the systemic to the unit level.
On the level of collective action, this very rational cost-benefit calculus leads, of
course, to the attempt to build alliances in order to avoid any single actor or alliance
perceiving itself in a power advantage and thus being prompted to expand territorially or
even politically by intimidating and coercing the other actors. In order to distinguish this
from the concept of Balance of Power that refers to the tendency of the international
system to equilibrate power differentials, this is generally called balance of power policy.
9
Barry Buzan, People, State, and Fear, p. 112.
Buzan uses a traditional realist concept of power linked to capabilities, especially military ones, for
foreign defence.
11
Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 21-26;
“Revolution and War”, World Politics, vol. 44, no. 3 (April 1992), pp. 332-33.
10
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Figure 7.1 Power assumptions
Common to both basic behavioural assumption is, in other words, competition in
search of an equilibrium. Once again, the wording reflects the seemingly easy analogy
between economic and international (not national political) behaviour (For an overview
of the assumptions, see Figure 7.1).
4. Conclusion: Questions of a Neorealist Power-Analysis
With these assumptions in mind, a power-informed Neorealist analysis will construct a
particular framework in order to understand empirical conflict and policy choices. As
shown in the discussion of Baldwin’s relational power analysis, the assessment of power
(and thus also its distribution) requires the prior analysis of the historically contingent
power resources, and the situationally contingent constellation of vulnerabilities. Since the
Gulf conflict took place in one of the asserted regional subsystems of international
relations, the first stage of Neorealist power analysis will describe the Middle Eastern
“Security Complex”.
This analytical tool allows us to analyse regional dynamics in the distribution of power,
actor’s threats, and intentions in their own right. This dynamic is autonomous, but not
independent of the central balance of power. In Buzan’s terminology, the link between the
two is called “penetration”, although, because regional dynamics can ricochet on the
central balance, it would be better to describe it as interpenetration (if one likes this word).
If the central balance’s competition imposes its dynamics on regional systems, Buzan et
al. speak of “overlay”.
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At this stage, the research programme will address questions which should help to
characterise the central and regional balances — and thus also the basic question of what
and who the relevant “powers” are. In other words, (1) what are the resources whose
control provides security and that, if they affect the interests of others, can be used as
threat or threat protection, (2) who controls them? Furthermore, the relational power
approach will ask if power was conceived as overall power (Waltz) or as issue-specific
power; was fungibility taken-for-granted or problematised? Then, the approach goes on
to set out the linkages between issue-areas and between the different levels on which
power shifts can affect outcomes: local-territorial, regional, and international. This
background sets the stage for the understanding of the basic structure before the conflict.
Here the origins of the Second Gulf War must be found.
Once the vulnerabilities and their distribution are known, the power analysis of a
conflict will come to its second stage: the translation of capabilities into real influence
over outcomes. This distinction of capabilities and influence is partly accepted, yet
Baldwin insists that power resources that are shown to be inefficient should never have
been counted as such. His attempt to preserve a conditional link between power and the
control over outcomes is necessary to preserve the explanatory power of (Neo)Realism.
The conditions are spelled out in a translation or conversion process, which underlies the
analysis of the conflict dynamic. This analysis is done with the assumption of low fungibility. Relevant questions are, for instance, have “powers” succeeded in overcoming the
“paradox of unrealised power”? How was the translation process from resources to power
effecting understood? How was the threat/sanction capacity assessed? Was its dependence
on the interplay of agents understood? Which are the regimes via which power was
translated? What are the linkages between security sectors, between levels of balances?
The outcome of the conflict becomes the starting point of a feedback dynamic of the
conflict on the different power structures and vulnerabilities of individual powers. Longterm dynamics can shift the historically contingent security sectors, i.e. add a new one
(like the environmental sector) or weigh their respective significance for overall security
differently. This must include an assessment of newly significant power resources which
would affect all power calculus and balances.
This feedback may rarely, and then only with difficulty be deduced from one
(regional) conflict alone. More probable are, however, reevaluations of power resources
during or through the conflict. Particular resources are seen to have proven more
significant for the exploitation of vulnerabilities or the defence from threats than initially
thought. Finally, the conflict will per definition affect the power distribution in the region,
either via the physical destruction of power resources, or their changed distribution. Thus,
the major questions are: Which is the new balance? What are the effects on individual
powers? Have regimes been changed via the conflict? Which resources have been found
most (least) applicable, which most (least) linkable? Was there any difference of this
assessment before and after the events? To what was it attributed?
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
In conclusion, this analysis should lead to policy debates. How can higher security/order be achieved and larger conflicts avoided? What would have been and what will
be the most rational policy to be pursued by the different powers? And for the more
idealistically inclined: what would have been and what will be the most moral policy?
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
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DOI: 10.2870/47026
8
Origins of the conflict: Power shifts in the Middle
Eastern security complex
Realists see conflicts as the catalyst of an equilibration of power. They are both the effect
of power shifts that have already happened and the origin of a new power constellation,
the next equilibrium. Conflicts effect power shifts, because “powers” would not engage
in a conflict if there was not a changed perception of the distribution of power, and thus
of power. A changed perception, if it makes conflict possible, is a real change in power,
because power is based not on its continuous exercise, but on its tacit acceptance.1 Thus,
the origins of a conflict have to be looked for in those security and power-related events
that have caused a relatively or temporarily stable system to move.
The first thing Neorealist will be looking at are the possible shifts in international
and/or regional balances of power. This approach has been expanded in more recent Neorealist writings to integrate questions of interdependence and regimes, i.e. the awareness
that capabilities are channelled differently in separate issue-areas of international relations.
This is the basic insight of all extensions to the anarchy problematique: Bull’s anarchical
society, Aron’s homogeneous systems, Kissinger’s legitimate systems, and Wolfers’ pole
of indifference (see chapter 4). The entire picture has been called a “Security Complex”.
If Neorealism’s analysis is carried out by purely geopolitical or structural Realists, this
first move is sufficient. The rest is dumped to foreign policy analysis. Yet, as I repeatedly
insisted and as some Neorealists acknowledge, economic theory combines assumptions
about the unit and the system level. Shifts within the Security Complexes must have a
correspondence in shifting unit-level behaviours.2 This does not mean that the nature of
behaviour must change. Competition remains basic. Yet, there must be a change. Either
1
Kenneth Waltz, “International Structure, National Force, and the Balance of World Power”, pp. 304-14.
Although it must also necessarily underlie Neorealist analysis, Buzan makes the derivation from actor’s
interaction more explicit by overtly conceiving security complexes as process formation.
2
139
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the number of big actors, and thus their behaviour, varies, or the distribution of forces
between the existing actors shifts to let the equilibrium appear so unbalanced for at least
one of these “powers” that it will start a conflict. Without this link from the systemic to
the unit-level, Neorealism would be not only blind to its assumptions, but pretty dull, too:
it would reduce itself to a mechanic power balancing riddled with well-known tautologies.
Thus, an analysis of the Security Complex is a conditio sine qua non for the study of
the origins of a conflict. It includes a study of the main actors’ security perceptions and
resulting motivations. Buzan’s definition of military security as concerning the capabilities
of states, “and states’ perceptions of each other’s intentions”, needs, in the very spirit of
Neorealism, to be extended to all security sectors.
As we have seen in Part III, Realism’s underlying theory of power sees the reason
why questions of security have a primordial function in the shaping of actors’ behaviour
in the anarchical international environment. Here the search for security exacerbate similar
attempts by other “powers”. The result is a continuous arms race3 and an overall increase
in insecurity. In short, this is the “security dilemma”.
To sum up: Neorealist analysis of the origins of a conflict will try to link up a
systemic with a unit-analysis. The systemic analysis will show that the conflict results
from a changed security complex, which means (1) a shifting distribution of force, and/or
(2) a modified density or functioning of the international society, or (3) a shifting link
(penetration) between central and regional balances. For the Gulf crisis, the first and the
last points are those most commonly analysed.
Figure 8.1 The Power Structure
The unit-analysis will retrace the security perception and power calculus of the main
actors that sparkled off the conflict. Strictly speaking, the unit-level is subsumed under the
3
Or more precisely: a continuous race for those resources in the different security sectors that provide
independence and security, as arms for the military sector.
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systemic, i.e. that security perceptions and power calculus are judged rational or irrational
with regard to the “objective” power shifts. In its supplementary critique of the rational
actor model, Allison’s work on crisis management still orders the research programme:
when the rational actor model does not work, we have a variety of hypotheses to
supplement it. The explanation is still organised along Realist rationality and its (possible)
exceptions.
1. A regional hegemonic war in a “unipolar moment”4
Nearly everyone said it: this was the first major international conflict after the end of the
Cold War. Or: it was the first of a “new world order”. These two themes have been replayed ad nauseam in the descriptions of the Gulf Conflict. In the following, an assessment will be made in order to show to what extent the changed central balance has influenced the regional security complex and the perceptions and intentions of the major
“powers”.5 Thus, by looking at the first and traditionally most important sector, military
security, the Neorealist power analysis of the Gulf Conflict is characterised by a quest for
regional hegemony in a “unipolar moment.”6
Two changes are analysed: the shift in the regional distribution of power after the end
of the Iran-Iraq war and the effects of the shift in the central balance of power after the
end of the Cold War. If there is a link between the shift in these two balances and military
security, then the Realist power story must analyse whether these changes have opened
or closed military options for some actors to such an extent that security issues were at
stake, that triggered the conflict.7
This case can be made. Yet, they are two possible effects of the “unipolar moment”
on regional security, namely (1) the closure of diplomatic options because only one superpower address was left to get help from and (2) the opening of options via a higher
regional political autonomy. Both argumentations seem valid and derive from the same
Realist account. In fact, they analyse two different forms of power shifts in the relation
between the central and the regional balances. In the first case, i.e. the reduction of
options, the “unipolar moment” does not reduce the overall power of the superpower
overlay. Presupposing a constant sum argument, the US takes over the USSR power part.
The effect on regional actors is a limitation of action. In the second case, the diminution
4
See for coined title: Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 70, no. 1
(America and the World 1990/91), pp. 23-33.
5
It is, by the way, an extremely interesting feature, that this conflict was considered a major historical
event during its unfolding. There was a nearly unprecedented awareness of a “unique” event. This is actually
an interesting incident for power analysis — but not in this chapter. See Part V, chapter 16.
6
Hegemony is understood in this section in the Realist sense, that is, as the predominance of one actor.
This predominance is based primarily on military power which is used to exhort political, economic and
financial advantages.
7
Simple shift in options is not enough. Such a change is incremental in international relations and we
would not be able to distinguish between general competition and overt conflict.
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of USSR interest as well as of superpower struggle means a general diminution of “central” power over the region, and thus an expansion of options for (some) regional actors.
This interpretation must logically presuppose that the main interest of the US in the region
was linked to its competition with the other superpower, whereas the first must see a more
permanent US interest. At this point, the analysis of a “power logic” must stop; only a
subjective security assessment can decide which of the stories did eventually prevail.
The following account shows how shifts in the central balance combined with the regional security structure can be linked to changes in the major actor’s policy option,
security perceptions, and thus eventually to the triggering of the Gulf conflict. It is seen
a conflict for regional hegemony between Iraq and the US.
1.1. The “freeze-theory”
Read backwards from the European experiences after 1989, the Cold War has come to be
perceived as a stabilising factor of territorial status quo.8 It disciplined regional conflicts.
The Middle East might not have been as comprehensively “overlaid” by the superpower
conflict as Europe.9 The superpowers have not really put a lid on all regional conflicts;
the Middle East was not strictly divided (with the exception of the Arab-Israeli conflict),
no spheres of influence existed in the same way as in Europe. Nevertheless, repressed
regional conflicts were breaking out; traditional conflicts were said to reappear. The
outbreak of regional conflicts becomes an incidence of the so-called “freeze-theory.”10
To construct such a story presupposes an unstable regional balance that could be fixed
only by the overlay of the superpower competition. And indeed, several “underlying”
conflicts can be discerned in the Gulf. The conflict for regional hegemony will be touched
on in the next sections. At this point we will concentrate on the immediate territorial issue
which is a relict of decolonisation. In this respect, the Gulf Conflict is a relatively
traditional territorial war between Iraq and Kuwait. Since this dispute seems a replay of
older ones, a short digression into its chronology might be illuminating. It will be used
by Realists to support their argument of a “Back to the Future” after the Cold War is over.
Realist approaches usually include issues of decolonisation around questions of statehood (and integration into international society), and around borders and territory. The
Iraq-Kuwait territorial dispute touches three security areas: prime resources, geopolitics
and economics. Expressed in power terms, the dispute has been about the control of three
highly valued and contested resources: oil, space and capital. In the specific context of the
8
Ghassan Salamé, “Les enjeux d’une crise”, Maghreb-Machrek, no. 130 (octobre-décembre 1990), p. 8.
Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, Pierre Lemaitre, Elzbieta Tromer and Ole Wæver, The European Security
Order Recast, pp. 15-16, 41-44. In Buzan’s approach, yet not necessarily for all power analyses, this opens
up the question of characterising the regional security complex as both (1) overlaid in its identity, because
the very centre of the regional security problem, the Arab-Israeli conflict, has been partly imported from the
international system, and (2) just penetrated, because the Middle East has always kept a regional dynamic.
10
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts (Universität
Hamburg: Hamburger Beiträge zur Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik, Heft 56, August 1991). p. 38.
9
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Second Gulf War, two territorial issues were at stake, namely the Rumaila oil fields and
the two islands of Bubiyan and Warba immediately outside the Iraq coastline.
Power politics enters this territorial dispute with the very drawing of the borderline.
Balance of power arguments have been invoked to defend the delineation of borders. The
British drawing of the coastline border created a quasi-continental state without maritime
outlet and was explicitly designed as an attempt to avoid a regional hegemonic power.11
The borderline was first fixed in the Anglo-Ottoman treaty of 1913.12 In this treaty
Kuwait became a British protectorate under Ottoman sovereignty, a statute comparable to
Egypt between 1882 and 1914 and Bosnia-Hercegovina between 1878 and 1908. In 1914,
Britain declared Kuwait an independent state under British protectorate. The OttomanKuwaiti border of 1913, which became the border between a British protectorate (Kuwait)
and a British mandate territory (Iraq after the end of the Ottoman Empire) was arbitrated
again in 1922. At that time, oil had already become an issue. Again Sir Percy Cox fixed
the line between the emerging Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq.13 Iraq got only a 60 km
coastline and no deep harbour. Since the independence of Iraq in 1932, King Ghazi
affirmed the “historic” (Ottoman) rights of Iraq over Kuwait whose sheykh he described
as “feudal” and “retrograde.”14 In 1938, the Kuwaiti legislative government unanimously
approved a request for Kuwaiti reintegration into Iraq. In the following year, the British
suppressed an armed uprising which had this as an object.15 Iraq’s only maritime outlet,
the port Umm Qasr build first in 1939, then destroyed and rebuild again, is controlled by
the two islands Bubiyan and Warba, that belong to Kuwait. Three more recent crises are
linked to this territorial dispute.
At Kuwait’s independence in 1961, Abd-al Karim Qasim expressed the Iraqi government’s intention to annexe Kuwait and in fact concentrated troops at the border. A week
later, on 1 July, the UK sent troops to protect the emirate. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt
supported Kuwaiti independence, although they organised the retreat of British troops. On
20 July, Kuwait was accepted into the Arab League and British troops replaced by Egyptians, Saudis, Jordans, and Sudanese. Despite repeated statements to the contrary in the
(secondary) literature, Iraq formally recognized the Kuwaiti state on 4 October 1963. It
11
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts, p. 7.
For the history of the border issue, see Henri Laurens, “Le contentieux territorial entre l’Irak et le
Kuwait,” Maghreb-Machrek, no. 130 (octobre-décembre 1990), pp. 14-24.
13
In 1913, in the anglo-ottoman negotiations, Sir Percy Cox was British agent. In 1923, he was High
Commissioner of Iraq. During the same occasion, Cox’s division, attempting to please Saudi claims, made
Kuwait lose two thirds of its territory. See also Hala Fattah, “From Regionalism to Nation-State: A Short
History of Kuwait,” in Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the Storm. A Gulf Crisis Reader
(New York: Olive Branch Press, 1991), pp. 45-46.
14
Henri Laurens, “Le contentieux territorial...”, pp. 19, 24.
15
Peter Gowan, “The Gulf War, Iraq and Western Liberalism”, New Left Review, no. 187 (May-June
1991), p.37.
12
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was the new Ba‘ath regime which, after its successful coup accepted Kuwaiti sovereignty
for $US 85 million. It did not, however, recognise the border line.16
In March 1973, Iraq invaded the North of Kuwait. Negotiations engaged under the
auspices of the Arab League and Iraq retreated in April. The territorial question remained
unresolved, since the Kuwaitis refused any concession, and the Iraqis remained ambiguous
about the final recognition of Kuwaiti borders. As usual, a contract exchanging Iraqi water
against Kuwaiti credits was signed. In 1975, the border zone was again occupied by Iraqi
troops. A plan to accept the border line, if the two islands were contractually given for
99 years to Iraq was not realised.17 The same request for a 99 years lease was repeated
in 1980, shortly after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, and in 1989 after the end of the
war. The Kuwaiti answer was always: no.18
All this indicates that many “games” that came up with the Second Gulf war have
been played before, as, for instance, territorial occupations, Arab military and diplomatic
buffering, and foreign intervention. In this reading, Kuwait is a particularly weak piece
in the Gulf-chain that needs permanent foreign protection, first British, then Arab - and
finally US. The latter started with the “Tanker war” in 1987, when Kuwait allied with the
US for the first time.
1.2. The loss of diplomatic freedom?
Two different theses exist with regard to the impact of central unipolarity on the power
calculus of regional actors. Both are perfectly compatible with Realist power reasoning.
For the first, the regional weakening of the USSR has triggered a change of policy by
regional actors to seek collaboration with the US, and thus should result in less confrontation. Traditionally, regional actors used the central balance to play of one superpower
against the other (Israel being a notable exception).19 A classical example is Egypt which
switched from a position of Non-Alignment to the USSR in 1956, in part because the US
refused to help finance the Assuwan dam. It moved back to equidistance after 1967 and
then switched to the US from 1972 onwards, when Soviet technicians were invited to
leave. Another example is USSR-aligned Iraq which, at the outset of the First Gulf War
1980-82, looked to the US for arms, because the USSR refused to supply these, and
eventually renewed diplomatic relations with US in 1984, after 16 years. Weaker Gulf
states tried to keep equidistance. Kuwait established diplomatic relations with USSR at the
end of 1980s. When, at the end of the First Gulf War, Kuwaiti oil tankers were attacked,
16
Bassam Tibi, “Die irakische Kuwait-Invasion und die Golfkrise”, Beiträge zur Konfliktforschung, no.
4 (1990), pp. 11-12.
17
It is not even clear when exactly the Iraqis retreated. It might be linked to the domestic changes (1975
is the year when Saddam Hussein seems to win the battle within the party).
18
Bishara A. Bahbah, “The Crisis in the Gulf—Why Iraq Invaded Kuwait,” in Phyllis Bennis and Michel
Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the Storm. A Gulf Crisis Reader (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1991), p. 51.
19
Martin Indyk, “Watershed in the Middle East”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 71, no. 1 (America and the World
1991/92), p. 70.
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a number were re-flagged and protected by US naval military forces. It seems that Kuwait
deliberately made advances to the Soviet Union inthis matter to force the hand of a rather
reluctant Reagan administration. The effectiveness of such a policy was heavily reduced
with the realignment of the USSR on US positions in the Third World, a position that
might be seen as a relatively inexpensive sign for its “New Thinking”. In other words, the
decline of Soviet influence in the region reduces the local options. Whereas Syria
realigned, “Iraq’s obdurate refusal to recognise what was happening… played a major role
in precipitating the Gulf crisis…”20 In the same vein, the US, as the only remaining
superpower, needed each of the regional actor less and therefore gained diplomatic
leverage.21
For the other interpretation, one need not retreat to arguments of a short-sighted,
irrational or otherwise unrealistic Iraqi behaviour. It is, on the contrary, possible to argue
“realistically” that for one regional actor, the just mentioned reduction of options might
not apply. If there is a regional hegemon that only waits for the Cold War lid to be lifted,
then the End of the Cold War would not have impeded, but rather facilitated aggressive
action. The hegemonic nation could reasonably expect that the end of the superpower
overlay made regional actors independent of superpower-patronage, if they so desired.
Territorial readjustments seemed to be back on the agenda without being automatically
dragged into the superpower conflict.22 This presupposes a highly unstable regional
balance that could be fixed only by the overlay of the superpower competition.
1.3. Hegemony on the globe, in the Near East, in the Gulf
Following a geopolitical account, regional hegemony in the Gulf meant first and foremost
British hegemony for a century and ending in 1971. It “secured” the region on the three
strategic levels: (1) domestically, it avoided disruptive change; (2) regionally, it prevented
war, and (3) globally, it deterred other superpower overlay. This period is at times
considered the height of benign hegemony in the Gulf, never to be reached again.23
The UK withdrawal produced a power vacuum, to be filled increasingly by a Pax
Irana. The military ascendency of Iran was consecrated by the Algiers Agreement of 6
March 1975, where the “Thalweg line” was accepted as border in the Schatt el-Arab.
During the 1975-79 period Iran turned into a status quo power. This changed through the
revolution in Iran. Then, Iran attempted to overthrow the Ba‘ath regime, because it was
20
George Joffe, “Middle Eastern Views of the Gulf Conflict and its Aftermath”, Review of International
Studies, vol. 19, no. 2 (April 1993), pp. 180, 181 (quote).
21
Martin Indyk, “Watershed in the Middle East”, p. 85.
22
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts, p. 39.
23
For this paragraph, see Shahram Chubin, “Post-war Gulf security”, Survival, vol. XXXIII, no. 2 (MarchApril 1991), p. 142.
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the first and foremost hindrance to an Islamic order in the region. Thus, according to this
account, war was inevitable for the defence of Iraq.24
After Iran’s defeat, Iraq did not face any regional actor comparable to its might. Thus,
whereas the above-mentioned argument, namely the reduction of the Cold War bipolar
overlay on the regional balance, applies theoretically to both actors, Iraq’s objectives put
it in a situation where it might try out the possible new options opened for regional
hegemons.
Yet, regional security cannot be reduced to the sole Iran-Iraq balance, even though it
is the centerpiece of the Gulf security complex. The Gulf is characterised by a triangle:
Iran, Iraq and the Arab Peninsula states, which, around Saudi Arabia (without Yemen),
established the Gulf Council for Cooperation in 1981. Given the three poles, the most
stable balance of power system seemed to be one in which there is a rough balance between the three poles with at least two status quo powers.25 The Iran-Iraq war had both
a balancing and neutralising effect on both states. Its end has left the two powers
dissatisfied. They were both interested in changing the regional balance. They had
developed a common interest in high oil prices in order to pay for the reconstruction: after
1988, the countries of the Arab peninsula felt more and more threatened by the two
hegemonic contenders.26 More threatened by Iranian Shi‘ia fundamentalism than by the
Ba‘ath ideology (or what remained of it) in Iraq, Saudi Arabia opted for the latter and
tried to co-opt and moderate Iraq. In 1989, the Council for Arab Cooperation was
founded.27 Iraq specialised in the particular role of the Arab defender against Iranian
power and Shi‘ite fundamentalism — in exchange for Gulf money and support. This role
could no longer be upheld after the war, because the Gulf states were less dependent on
Iraq for anti-Iranian protection. Thus, the end of the First war unbalanced the regional
system.
Besides the Gulf triangle, Iraq is also balancing its possible hegemony in the Gulf
against the Israeli hegemony in the Near East. Again, the evolution of Arab-Israeli relations after 1988 can be said to have opened options for a regional hegemon and thus eventually paved the way for the Iraqi invasion in Kuwait. The Palestinian cause has usually
been used by those countries that aspired to regional leadership.28 Yet Iraq could not do
24
This is the account of Efraim Karsh, “Geopolitical Determinism: The Origins of the Iran-Iraq War”,
Middle East Journal, vol. 44, no. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 256-268. The strong reliance on the foreign policy shift
which the Iranian revolution induced, is obviously no “determinist” geopolitical argument. Iran had a
comparably geopolitical strength in 1979 and in 1980, having possibly increased in “ideological power,” but
not necessarily in “military power.” For Karsh, the geopolitical argument derives from strategic thinking, i.e.
that Iraq was responding to an external threat caused by a change in Iranian intentions. Since he admits that
the general rule “vicinity breeds conflict” is only partly true, no geopolitical “determinism” can follow.
25
Shahram Chubin, “Post-war Gulf security”, p. 153.
26
Ghassan Salamé, “Les enjeux d’une crise”, p. 10.
27
Yet, already the meeting end of May 1990 showed the internal thrift, when the Iraqi government was
not able to push through Arab sanctions against the US for its pro-Israel policy.
28
For the following argument, see William B. Quandt, “The Middle East in 1990”, Foreign Affairs, vol.
70, no. 1 (America and the World 1990/91), pp. 53ff.
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so as long as peace talks were channelled via Arafat’s PLO, Egypt and the US. Until early
1990, the US was pressing Israel hard to accept the Baker Plan, which remained well short
of what Israel signed at Camp David. US-Israeli relations were brought to a historic low
when Israel finally refused the Plan in March 1990. Direct US-PLO contacts were,
however, going on. After an incident in Israel during which seven Palestinians were killed,
the US planned to vote for a UN Security Council resolution which would have allowed
the UN Secretary General to carry out an investigation. Apparently on Iraqi instigation,
this very day the Abul Abbas branch of the PLO carried out an abortive strike on the
Israeli coast. The US, hard pressed domestically, vetoed the resolution. Arafat was furious
and isolated. On 20 June, Bush suspended the US-PLO dialogue. The Palestinian card
passed to Iraq. The collapse of Arab-Israeli peace talks unbalanced the Middle East
regional system by isolating Egypt within the Arab world and Arafat’s El-Fatah within the
PLO. It made the Gulf subsystem even more independent from the Near East.
In a sense, this division of the two subsystems accentuates a regional bipolarised
system with Israel pitched against Iraq. After the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq sought to establish
a double regional balance of deterrence. The aim was to link the Israeli (atomic)
predominance in the Near East and Iraqi (chemical) predominance in the Gulf. Thereby
the Second Gulf war becomes the last in a chain of Iraq-Israeli contests: the air attack in
1981 against Iraqi nuclear facilities, then the Iraqi-Israeli crisis in March-April 1990 and
finally the Second Gulf War.29
In this context, the “unipolar moment” permitted the US a role as a new balancer both
in the Gulf and in the Near East. In the Tanker war, the US took sides against Iran. Its
unintended attack on an Iranian civil Airbus was interpreted as intended by Iranian
officials and helped to stop the conflict, because the latter thought worse would follow.30
Then, the US was becoming the protector of the Peninsula states31 against Iraq and Iran.
If Iraq was (is) challenging the Israeli leadership of the Near East, the “geopolitical
logic” points to a regional hegemonic contest between Iraq and the US. This was
acknowledged by analysts of the time. For example, Zalmay Khalilzad, a member of the
State Department Policy Planning Staff, wrote a memo arguing that with Iran weakened
and unable to balance Iraq, Iraq would now be the one seeking regional dominance and
would see the United States as a threat. “The logic of power [sic!] is that a regional
hegemon would want any external power out of the region.”32
29
Elizabeth Picard, “Le régime irakien et la crise. Les ressorts d’une politique”, Maghreb-Machrek, no.
130 (Oct.-Dec. 1990), p. 30.
30
Arnold Hottinger, “Der Auftakt zur Golf-Krise”, Europa Archiv, no. 17 (1990), p. 513, fn. 1.
31
Not all. There is an antagonism on the peninsula. Yemen as the most populated country represents a
threat to Saudi Arabia after the former’s unification. Not unexpectedly, the Saudi government has tried ever
since to break up the state again.
32
Bruce W. Jentleson, “‘The Enemy of my Enemy … may still be my Enemy, too’: U.S.-Iraqi relations,
1982-1990, and the Failure of Accommodation”, Paper presented to the 32nd Annual Conference of the
International Studies Association, April 1-5, 1992, Atlanta, USA (March 1992), p. 36.
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1.4. The challenger: a regional middle power
Yet the “logic of power” can give only one type of explanation of why Saddam Hussein
should use a regional war to get the US out of the region: Hussein is more powerful in
a regional conflict or is induced to think so. To understand the trigger of the conflict,
Neorealist analysis must link the balance of power structure to the actor’s security
perception. This is a relational concept, as is deterrence. It concerns the dialectic interplay
of wills.
This link is the first tricky enterprise in Neorealist power analysis. It is build around
the idea of a “balance of threats”. Realist writers have since long been aware that similar
power balances do not always produce similar outcomes. The rationalisations of this
observation make up the whole realist-idealist agenda in policy-debates, as for instance
(1) irredentist vs. status quo power behaviour and (2) disproportionate insecurity
perceptions, both affected by, but not reducible to the distribution of power. Both lines
of thought point in the direction of the study of rules. Whereas the first can still reason
in terms of different “powers” and the system of international accords and alliances, the
second focuses on the individual decision-making including psychological parameters.
Security perception and the will to exercise power cannot be taken for granted. In order
to keep Neorealist coherence, power analysis constructs a “normal” case with a reasonable
national interest formulation and implementation, all derived from the distribution of
power, and discriminates exceptional actions accordingly.
In the analysis of the two impacts the diminished overlay can have on regional security, closure and opening of options, Hussein escalated the conflict as if he anticipated that
a wider range of options might become available to him. This story presupposed a diminished US interest in the region once the superpower conflict was over, or at least some
regional restraint on the side of the US by the remaining Soviet power.
The first hypothesis, of a perceived diminished US interest in the region, contradicts
explicit Iraqi statements. The available information does not suggest that the Iraqi
government believed in a declining US interest, or that they miscalculated the effect of
the end of the Cold War for regional security. It does not appear that Hussein’s “obdurate
refusal to recognize” (see above) the changed international environment can be the cause
for triggering the conflict.
Quite to the contrary, Hussein repeatedly warned against US expansionism. Before the
invasion, at the February 1990 meeting of the Arab Cooperation Council in Amman,
Hussein analysed the world as left with one superpower that “will continue to depart from
the restrictions that govern the rest of the world… the country that will have the greatest
influence in the region through the Arabian Gulf and its oil, will maintain its superiority
as a superpower without an equal to compete with it. This means that if the Gulf people,
along with all Arabs, are not careful, the Arabian Gulf will be governed by the US
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will.”33 In a speech for the 22nd anniversary of the revolution, on 27 July 1990, Saddam
Hussein presented the whole mounting crisis as the outgrowth of a US attempt to
dominate the Gulf and in particular the price of oil. In order to control its allies34 and
the USSR when the latter will become net importer, bigger strategic oil reserves are
needed. These would permit the US to go to war and speculate on stocks whenever it suits
its interests. Thus, he argued, low prices are needed. He acknowledged that there was a
collusion of interests between Arab countries and US speculators that managed downwards
oil prices whenever needed. As a result, Hussein depicted the Gulf as a region where the
US can influence the oil prices at its will, thereby threatening the stability of any country
in the Middle East. This will be indirectly paid for by the Arabs themselves via lower
prices, thus lower incomes, followed by money depreciation.35
This view of an unchecked US bid for regional dominance, and the necessity to check
it, applies also for Iraq’s reasoning during the crisis. The following statements are reported
from a meeting with Budimir Loncar, Yugoslavia’s federal secretary for foreign affairs on
28 December 1990.
The United States was the only superpower left, Saddam continued. It was an open
question whether the Americans would behave responsibly, or whether they would seek
to hold the entire world in their hands. “It is not in the interest of the world”, Saddam
said. “It is not in the interest even of the United States [for the Americans] to become
masters of the Middle East oil fields. In this way, [the United States] could become a
power without a compass. Such a power could bring the world to the brink … [so that]
when Iraq defends its homeland, it is defending the liberty of all.” Loncar replied,
“Three years ago, this crisis would have acquired such global dimensions that it would
have become a contest between the blocs in the end. Now, all this has changed. One can
no longer count on the existence of two antagonistic blocs.” Saddam nodded his
agreement. Then he interrupted, “But exactly because the balance is disrupted, because
the USSR is out of the game, this is an opportunity to start establishing a new
counterbalance to the United States.”36
The often repeated argument was that the Iraqi government overestimated the Soviet
influence in the central and regional balance. Several Iraqi attempts to mobilise the USSR
against the US can serve as indicators, as, for instance, the trip by Tareq Aziz to Moscow
33
U.S. News and World Report, Triumph Without Victory. The Unreported History of the Persian Gulf
War (Toronto, New York: Random House, Times Books, 1992), p. 16.
34
This theme has already been played during a former Middle East crisis. In 1973, the French Foreign
Minister at the time, Michel Jobert, insinuated and reacted as if the US wanted to control the oil market, and
its energy agencies, in order to control its allies. As usual, US Realists most critical towards their domestic
idealists, are ill-prepared if foreigners turn Realism against themselves. Kissinger castigates Jobert’s obsessions
and their personal competition, but he understands it only too well. See Henry A. Kissinger, The White House
Years, p. ?
35
“Discours de Saddam Hussein pour le 22e anniversiare de la révolution” du 27 juillet 1990 à Baghdad,
Maghreb-Machrek, no. 130 (octobre-décembre 1990), p. 65.
36
U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, p. 195.
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just before the US-Soviet summit in September in Helsinki and the open letter by Saddam
Hussein to Gorbachov on the eve of the summit. In this letter, he reminded the Soviet
government that without any reaction it might lose its status as a superpower.37 Yet this
evidence is not conclusive. Once the conflict broke out, it could be expected that the Iraq
would try to weaken the coalition build against it, by playing the superpowers against one
another. The USSR, with which it had a treaty of friendship and cooperation since the
1970s, would be an obvious target. Since February 1990, Saddam Hussein had declared
that the USSR was no longer the “main defender of the Arab cause.”38 Iraqi miscalculation of the Soviet side in the conflict seems implausible.39
The question remains: faced with such a security threat, why did Hussein start a
conflict where he must have anticipated an increasing reduction of national power and
security? How can his decision to invade be rationally understood? As mentioned above,
the underlying motive might either be an irredentist and profoundly expansionist behaviour
that no regime can ever alter by any means short of war (the Nazi German analogy), or
a perceived threat of insecurity so high as to make a preemptive war the lesser evil (the
Wilhelminian German analogy). The difference between the two is of great importance
for the assessment of the correct US foreign policy response. In the first case, where Iraq
would be seen as an opportunity driven aggressor (explicitly linked to the Hitler analogy),
deterrence would be the appropriate means. In the second, where Iraq appears as a
vulnerable country in need, reassurance would be the best choice.40
The expansionist argument would take Iraqi’s bid for regional hegemony for granted
and add reasons to understand why it triggered the war in that “Unipolar Moment”. In the
specific case, Iraq could reasonably expect that the international management of the Soviet
decline and of Central and Eastern European liberation would leave the two superpowers
too occupied with themselves to react. The moment for intervention was not only given
by a shifting central balance of power, but by Hussein’s perception that the US would not
engage on multiple fronts, although they had vital interests in the region. This argument
derives from the interdependence of different security issues and the possibility to link
different strategic theatres, a possibility given by the interpenetration of the regional and
the central security complexes. The necessity of intervention might have been severed by
the impression that if Iraq did not gain power when the US was still accommodating the
Soviet decline, it would not be able to do it in the foreseeable future and thus become
37
Bassam Tibi, “Der Irak und die Golfkrise”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. B 7-8/91 (8 February
1991), p. 4.
38
Helmut Hubel, “Die Mächte im Nahen Osten und der zweite Golfkrieg”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte,
B 30-31/91 (19 July 1991), p. 4.
39
An acute attempt to rationalise crisis and war behaviour of the major actors notes this contradiction
between the statements about sure US response and the expressed Iraqi disappointment of the Soviet response.
See Janice Gross Stein, “Deterrence and Compellence in the Gulf, 1990-1991: A Failed or Impossible Task”,
International Security, vol. 17, no. 2 (Fall 1992), p. 173.
40
Janice Gross Stein, “Deterrence and Compellence in the Gulf 1990-1991”, pp. 156-57, where she links
the Hitler story with the opportunity-driven aggressor.
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completely dependent on the regional hegemon, the US. Similarly, the regional
configuration with different rapprochements (Iran-Kuwait, Egypt-Iraq, Saudi Arabia-US)
were loosening the Iraqi dominance which persisted after the First Gulf war.41
Here, we would have a classic security argument; the Soviet decline makes the US
presence a threat to Iraq’s security, the conflict being a preemptive attack to gain power
in order to face the US politically. Thus, we have constructed a military security story that
links the power shift to central unipolarity via the security perception of regional actors
to the invasion of Kuwait. It is the Iraqi side of the bid for regional hegemony.
The second argument, namely the heightened insecurity approach, must construct a
story where different outside dynamics would spur a perception of threat big enough to
make the war necessary for survival. War appears here not as premeditated, but as a
“choice of last resort, taken only after trying other means for shoring up his position in
the face of great adversity … In short, Kuwait has been the latest casualty of the Iraqi’s
leader struggle for survival in general, and of the Iran-Iraq war in particular.”42 This
account cites a series of events that fostered the Iraqi government’s threat perception and
thus insecurity. Karsh and Rautsi talk of many plots against Hussein. The Western effort
to dismantle the supergun (see below, chapter 10, 3.3) was interpreted as a campaign
aimed at paving the way for military aggression against Iraq, “a suspicion which was
aggravated by [Hussein’s] conviction that Israel would never allow any Arab state to blunt
its technological edge. More immediately, however, Hussein feared that the massive influx
of Soviet Jews to Israel would boost the self-confidence of the Jewish State and would
lure it into military adventures beyond its frontiers.”43
Thus, an Israeli threat is considered as part of the triggering dynamic.44 In March
1990, “the Iraqi public was in a panic that an Israeli attack might be imminent.”45 Thus,
by early April, Hussein might have concluded that he must escalade threats against Israel
to deter it. His speech of 2 April, where, in the midst of conciliatory remarks, he
41
Gunther Hellmann, “Der Krieg um Kuwait: Katalysator einer „neuen Weltordnung“ oder Vorbote neuer
Konflikte”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. B 7-8/91 (8 February 1991), pp. 13-14.
42
Efraim Karsh & Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait”, Survival, vol. XXXIII, no. 1
(January-February 1991), pp. 18-19.
43
Efraim Karsh & Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait”, p. 23. The fact that the authors
must quote Iraqi sources (newspapers) to support the argument, makes it difficult to judge if it was just a press
campaign using the powerful Israeli argument as a way to justify Iraqi expansionism or if the Iraqi
government indeed perceived an Israeli threat.
44
This would be also corroborated by the Iraqi ballistic missile programme which announced to have
tested an anti-tactical missile, the Faw-1 in 1988. Although the claim was (rightly) received as dubious for
the great complexity of the technology, “it clearly indicates the direction of Iraqi security thinking. The system
is ostensibly intended to counter possible Israeli missile attack.” See Aaron Karp, “Ballistic missile proliferation in the Third World”, in SIPRI Yearbook 1989. World Armaments and Disarmament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 298-99 for the Iraqi production and pp. 299-300 for the Israeli regional primacy as
exemplified by its first domestically launched satellite on 19 September 1988, lifted by one of its IRBM.
45
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, in Victoria Brittain (ed.) The Gulf
Between Us. The Gulf War and Beyond (London: Virago Press, 1991), p. 11.
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threatened Israel with an attack including chemical weapons, becomes in this reading not
a sign for Iraq expansionism, but of Iraqi deterrence.46
This story comes eventually close to Kissinger’s distinction between a legitimate and
a revolutionary power. The latter’s feeling of insecurity is nothing uncommon in international affairs. What makes a power “revolutionary” is not that it feels threatened, “but
that nothing can reassure it.”47 Such a power looks for absolute security for itself, which
in the international system, means absolute insecurity for all other powers. Expansionism
and war is the result of a country which perceives its security to be permanently
threatened by the outside world. Conflicts arise out of the repeated attempts to free itself
form this perceived threat. This can occur also, one might add to Kissinger’s account, if
it would seem rational, i.e. conform to the distribution of power, not to risk a war.
Consequently, for both explanations, the conflict is seen as a war for regional
hegemony, here because of Iraqi expansionism, there for its insecurity. Both understandings stress the perceived necessity of the Iraqi government to preempt either US or Israeli
power. “The question is who can impose its hegemony on the Gulf states…, yesterday
Iran or Iraq, today Iraq or the US.”48
1.5. The counterforce: the international hegemon
The conflict arose not only through Iraq’s invasion, but also because the United States
reacted in such a determinate way in order to realize its bid for hegemony in the Gulf and
to make an old strategic dream come true: to have direct military access to and control
of the Gulf. Once again we have two different stories for the effect of the shift in the
central balance on US regional security and behaviour, both compatible with Neorealism.
For some commentators, the changed Soviet approach led to a changed international
strategic thinking which is also partly responsible for the United States’ “concept of
unilateral intervention”.49 The Gulf Conflict is seen as the last US intervention in a
longer chain. These interventions were traditionally not possible. Yet, due to the
weakening of the USSR, the US became more interventionist in regional affairs. This
applies particularly to the backyard of US foreign policy, Central and South America.
After a relative decline of overt US intervention as a means of neighbouring policy, the
Grenada invasion marked a turn — and was greeted as such. This renewed policy of direct
intervention reached a high point with the bombardment of Panama and the removal of
Noriega. But also in the Middle East, the US took a more interventionist stand, as against
Syria in the Lebanon crisis in 1983, against Libya with the “surgical strike” air attack
46
47
48
49
Efraim Karsh & Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait”, p. 23.
Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored, p. 2. Italics in the original.
Arnold Hottinger, “Der Auftakt zur Golf-Krise”, p. 508, 514, fn. 9 (quote).
George Joffe, “Middle Eastern Views of the Gulf Conflict and its Aftermath”, p. 179.
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targeted at Ghaddafi’s headquarters in 1986, against Iran in the Tanker war at the end of
the First Gulf War in 1988, and finally against Iraq in the Second Gulf War in 1991.50
The exact assessment of the range of options newly available to the US because of
the USSR’s disinterest in superpower showdowns, could be best “tested” in practice. In
that sense, the assessment of the new range of options is in itself a new option. Thus, the
Gulf Conflict can be seen as the US attempt to test the exact degree of Soviet weakening
and of the recognition of US leadership.51 This kind of interpretation is a replay of the
typical power vacuum argument: without the pressure in the central balance, the US can
do whatever the regional actors allow. The US power expansion comes to a halt when the
marginal return from further expansion is equal and/or inferior to the costs. The reduced
Soviet presence means the removal of a big obstacle to the US’ attempt to fill the regional
power vacuum. The change of power in the central balance makes a regional conflict
possible which, in turn, helps to assess the extent of the central power shift.
As with the discussion of Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST), the thesis about US
hegemony is challenged by those who see the basic shift in a long-term power decline of
the US. The second way to approach the US bid for regional hegemony is to see it as an
attempt to reverse the power decline by the means of a regional war. This is the only case
where the shift to the post Cold War is understood as a shift in the importance of
particular policy instruments. The end of the Cold War exacerbated the general tendency
to replace military means for conflict resolution that had spurred the discussion on
Complex Interdependence from the 1970s onwards. Yet increasingly, the US appears to
lose economic, financial and ideological bases for sustaining its hegemony. “The Cold
War is over — and Japan and Germany have won.”52 In this reading, the Second Gulf
War can be seen as an attempt of a declining hegemon to use its remaining power in order
to reinstall the military factor as the main power factor — and thus reproduce its
hegemony.53 Putting military means at the top of the power instruments enables the US
to use this remaining leverage and apply “linkage” to other fields for forcing its partners
to make concessions.54 After all, it was the first US war financed by others, domestically
through US debt and Japanese credits, internationally through Petro-Dollars and Western
checkbook-diplomacy. “Burden-sharing” can, of course, be seen both as an indicator of
decreasing power, because the US has to use foreign money, and as an indicator of
strength, because only the US is able to enforce such a “sharing.” The first interpretation
50
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweit”, p. 16.
Ghassan Salamé, “Les enjeux d’une crise”, p. 6.
52
Andre Gunder Frank, “Third World War: A political economy of the Gulf War and the new world
order”, Third World Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 2 (1992), p. 270.
53
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts, p. 42. This
argument takes sometimes psychological traits, when the US is represented as an actor who wants to heal the
profile-neurosis of a power with decreasing confidence.
54
Silviu Brucan, “El orden mundial tras el fracaso del comunismo y la guerra del golfo,” in Silviu
Brucan, Andre Gunder Frank, Johan Galtung, and Immanuel Wallerstein, El orden munidal tras la crisis de
la guerra del golfo (Alicante: Instituto de cultura «Juan Gil-Albert», 1993), pp. 9ff.
51
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
of HST is compatible with the framework in this chapter; the second might indicate a
different power analysis.
Thus, the implosion of Soviet power and its effects on the Gulf can be traced to
security issues that push the two contenders for regional hegemony, Iraq and the US, to
make a try. In the “new world order,” Iraq tries to establish a power space for itself
whereas the US, aware of the risk of many “Iraqs”, resorts to a war, not of liberation, but
of power destruction to reinforce its international hegemony. In the words of the former
French Minister of Defence, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who resigned during the Gulf
Conflict, the “new world order” got its founding experience: a UN-approved war of
punishment for a Southern challenger.55
2. Beyond military security: political and financial destabilisation
Neorealists could, but only few would, be satisfied with the geopolitical account presented
above. As already noted, recent security analysis usually includes ideas of interdependence
and must be able to account for linkages between military capabilities and other issue or
security areas.
Druing periods of détente, the military agenda did not seem to apply to International
Relations. A lot of so-called “low-politics” issues, and in particular economic relations,
became of outmost importance. This happened first, because the nuclear stalemate both
exported East-West competition to third parties and lowered the level where direct EastWest competition could take place, namely in the economic (and ideological) sphere. The
question of “economic statecraft” became crucial, because here Western policies could try
to induce policy changes in the East without trespassing the military threshold. Kissinger’s
“linkage” is typical of this period.
As a reverse side of this détente approach, a “securisation” of normally non-security
issues has taken place. Expanding on neo-mercantilist thinking, more and more national
security formulations explicitly take questions of economic resources, credits and debts,
and environmental threats into account.56 The basic reason is probably to be found in the
rising internal and external expectations on governmental action. The 20th century has
seen the global development of mass-mobilised societies. Political systems were forced
to create a more widely based system of representation. They often ressorted to economic
and social rewards as a buffers of rising social mobilisation. This makes regimes and their
political order highly dependent on economic success. In a similar move, the Welfare State
in economically developed countries has fostered the legitimacy of democracy, but
concomitantly, made regimes highly sensitive to long economic crises or recessions. The
Gulf conflict is no exception to this rule. Many analyses of the conflict, which are
55
“Ce qui manque à notre république, c’est le citoyen”, entretien avec Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Le
Nouveau Politis, no. 177 (Avril 1992), pp. 23.
56
For this point, see in more detail, Ole Wæver, Securitization and Desecuritization, Working Paper
5/1993 (Copenhagen: Centre for Conflict and Peace Research, 1993).
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compatible with Neorealist power analysis, see the internal insecurity of Hussein’s regime
after the Iran-Iraq war as the main reason for his hasty attack.
2.1. After 1973: increasing autonomy of the regional security complex
At the beginning of the 1970s, the Middle East provoked a reconsideration of strategic
agendas. Oil was no new primary resource for which battles, diplomatic or not, have been
fought. After all, colonisation might not have been done (solely) for the control of primary
resources, but colonial powers were aware of them and did not disregard either possible
profits or strategic independence. When Sir Percy Cox decided in 1922 on the borders in
the Northeast of the Arab Peninsula, he constructed two so-called “neutral zones” between
Kuwait and Iraq, because the British (rightly) suspected there to be oil-fields, the income
from which should be shared between the two countries (and the British oil-companies).
Nationalisation of MNC investment was also already old hat with decolonisation. The
new point in 1973 was that organised opposition to Western handling of primary product
markets arose which could, at least temporarily, affect Western states and households
directly.57 Low politics could hurt. It could upset the domestic basis of Welfare
legitimacy and the international system of “embedded liberalism”.
The regional order, or its balance of power was deeply reshuffled as a result of the
oil boom and the increase in revenue after 1973. East-West penetration, as exemplified
by superpower clientelistic relations and the rift between conservative and progressive
governments, became less important. The region’s own power, in the sense of the control
of generally valued resources like oil and money, increased, as did the region’s selfdynamic. Besides the above-mentioned military security balance, the region was build
around the exchange of capital for labour: Petro-Dollars transferred from rich to poor
countries and labour immigration into rich countries with capital transfers back. By 1980
the rich states were giving their poorer Arab neighbours $US 7.9 billion a year in
economic assistance (for an assessment of Arab aid, see Table 8.1). The cumulative
financial flows between 1979 and 1989 totalled $US 55 billion for aid and $US 87 billion
for net workers’ remittances, that is $US 142 billion. This represented “on average nearly
a fifth of recipient country imports, over 20% of total investment and about 5.5% of
GNP.”58 This balance was the basis for the more autonomous regional economic security
structure.
The slump in the oil price during the 1980s profoundly weakened this “balance of
interests.” Arab oil revenues dropped from $US 178 billion in 1980 to $US 41 billion in
1986. The redistribution via aid and remittances had always covered only a minimal part
of the oil income of richer countries. But before the oil price crisis, the major donor
57
One did not care that much during these years about the poor oil-importing countries. This arrived only
with the debt crisis at the end of the 1970s.
58
For the following figures, see: “Economic crisis in the Arab World,” ODI Briefing Paper (London:
Overseas Development Institute, March 1991), pp. 2-3.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Table 8.1 Aid by Arab Countries 1980 and 1986-1990
1980
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
US$ millions
Arab Countries
of which:
9 539
4 498
3 290
2 262
1 487
6 312
Saudi Arabia
Kuwait
5 682
1 140
3 517
715
2 888
316
2 048
108
1 171
169
3 692
1 666
Aid as percentage of GNP
Arab Countries
of which:
3.26
1.81
1.24
0.85
0.54
--
Saudi Arabia
Kuwait
4.87
3.52
4.67
2.89
3.88
1.20
2.64
0.40
1.49
0.54
3.89
--
Source: OECD Development Cooperation, 1991 Report
countries decided to cut aid for the period 1980-1988 by 63% (Saudi Arabia) and 91%
(Kuwait). In 1989, the total value of inter-Arab aid transfers had dwindled from $US 8.7
billion in 1980 to less than $US 1.5 billion.
In a confidential report of 1990, the Union des banques arabes et françaises (UBAF)
in Paris, estimated that although the total Arab debt was about $US 208 billion, Arab
credits abroad reached $US 670 billion. In other words, less than 10 million Arabs living
in the six countries of the GCC can dispose of a surplus of $US 462 billion, whereas 190
million Arabs are indebted at 52% of their GNP or 181% of their export income. By
1990, only 7% of GCC investment went to the Arab world.59
In the meanwhile, especially Kuwait has become independent of oil incomes. With
a GNP of around $US 20 billion, Kuwait accumulated a foreign wealth of around $US
120 billion. Through the omnipresent Kuwait Investment Office it invested around $US
25 to 30 billion in the US in forms of assets, real estate and in particular US Treasury
Bonds. Other investments have gone to Spain, Japan and Germany. In the latter, Kuwait
holds 20% of Hoechst and of Daimler Benz. The income from these investments is higher
than the oil income. There is thus a common interest of both Kuwait and the Western
world in international economic stability.60
59
For details of this report, see Doneya Awny, “La dette arabe: 208 milliards de dollars”, Le Monde
diplomatique, vol. 37, no. 438 (Septembre 1990), p. 19.
60
Frédéric Clairemonte, “La finance koweïtienne peut se passer des revenus de pétrole”, Le Monde
diplomatique, vol. 37, no. 438 (Septembre 1990), p. 18.
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After 1988, and after the financial crowding out produced by the first Gulf war, the
balance no longer held. The Gulf has been characterised as a unique balance between rich,
poorly populated and badly defended countries and densely populated, well armed, but
relatively poor ones.61 It was this explosive mixture which triggered the conflict.
2.2. Iraq’s fuite en avant
At least 100.000 Iraqis died during the First Gulf war. Iraq was financially exhausted. The
costs of Iraqi reconstruction after the war were estimated at $US 230 billion,62 the entire
war cost at $US 452.6 billion, that is 435% of its oil revenue, and 112% of its yearly
GNP.63 This meant that Iraq had to find money quickly. Yet, concomitantly, Iraq had
accumulated a rather high debt (see Table 8.2) out of which $US 80 billion had to be
rescheduled just after the war. This corresponds to 1.5 times of their GDP. $US 30 billion
were due to Western civil debt and $US 16 billion to Western military debt.64 For 1990,
usually $70 billion are indicated as the Iraqi debt.65
This debt was contracted mainly through public bilateral creditors, as COFACE for
France, ECGD for the UK, Hermes for the FRG, SACE for Italy, MITI for Japan, and
Eximbanks of different countries including Turkey. Some international banks, in particular
Arab banks and the now famous American (Atlanta) branch of the Banca Nazionale del
Lavoro provided the credits. There is also a possible financing by Gulf states. Iraq has
only a small income from foreign investments, in particular from assets in Japan. Iraq’s
wish not to render the debt and the whole financial situation transparent and probably also
not to run an austerity program that would have impinged on the military budget, deprived
it of multilateral credits, such as the more favourable World Bank credits.66 The military
budget was responsible during the war for a third of Iraqi GNP (32% in 1986) and
amounted to $US 14 billion in 1988.
The movements of the current balance of payments (see Table 8.3) did not give any
reason for hope, if military spending were not drastically cut, or oil incomes drastically
raised. Sources different from the one quoted in Table 8.3 speak of $US 13 billion for oil
exports, which is (un)balanced civilian imports of $US 12 billion, military imports of $US
5 billion, debt repayment of $US 4-5 billion and private transfers of $US 1 billion. In this
61
Ghassan Salamé, “Les enjeux d’une crise”, p. 9; Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion
du Koweït”, pp. 14, 17-18.
62
Efraim Karsh & Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait”, p. 19.
63
Abbas Alnasrawi, “Iraq: economic consequences of the 1991 Gulf War and future outlook”, Third
World Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 2 (1992), p. 336.
64
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït”, pp. 6-7; Alexander Cockburn and
Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, p. 8.
65
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts, p. 27; Ursula
Braun, “Epizentrum Kuwait …”, p. 60.
66
For this paragraph, see Benoit Parisot, “La situation économique et financière de l’Irak à la mi-1990.
Quelle influence sur la décision d’envahir le Koweït?”, Maghreb-Machrek, no. 130 (octobre-décembre 1990),
pp. 39-41.
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Table 8.2 The total amount of Iraqi debt (1988)
Iraqi Debt (data from 1988)
I. General debt
short-term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
long-term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(billion US$)
6.21
6.68
15.37
II. War Debt With Arab countries
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30-40.0
III. Military Debt With Western countries
France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4-5.0
8-10.0
IV. (Military) Debt With USSR
Declared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Estimated Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.38
10-20.3
TOTAL
37-50.0
excluding Arab debt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(220%-370% of yearly foreign currency income in 1989)
67-90.0
including Arab debt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Source: Benoit Parisot, “La situation économique et financière de l’Irak à la mi-1990. Quelle influence
sur la décision d’envahir le Koweit?”, Maghreb-Machrek, no. 130 (octobre-décembre 1990), p. 37.
account the deficit grows by $US 10 billion per year.67
The Iraqi government had both to adapt its war-economy to peacetime and to satisfy
the population with a peace dividend.68 Yet the domestic economic situation was not
making it easy for the Iraqi government. 200.000 soldiers came back from war and had
to be integrated into the labour market of the civil economy. Food production was both
insufficient (food imports stood at $US 750 million in 1989, i.e. 70-80% of food supply)
and expensive, because the government had to subsidise prices. For example, it spent
yearly $US 700 million for wheat. Although not a very populated country, the demographic growth is one of the highest in the world, 3.6%, or 1 million every 14 month.
As a short-term economic expedient, the Iraqi government accelerated a “liberalisation” program which had slowly started in 1979 with the privatisation of agriculture and
67
Efraim Karsh & Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait”, p. 19. For the US$ 4 billion
in annual debt service by 1990, see “Economics factors in the invasion of Kuwait”, Overseas Development
Institute (London: Briefing Paper, March 1992), p. 1.
68
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït. Un pétro-dinar belligène”, p. 7. For the
following figures, see also: Elizabeth Picard, “Le régime irakien et la crise”, p. 26.
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Table 8.3 Iraqi Current balance of payments 1988 and 1989
Current balance of payments
(in billion dollars)
1988
1989
Exports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Imports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Military Imports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.5
-9
- 3.5
15.0
-10.5
-3.0
Trade balance
-1.0
1.5
Interests (due, not necessarily paid) . . . . . .
Other debt services (e.g. of foreign firms) . .
Private transfers (e.g. immigrant transfers) .
- 2.6
- 0.8
- 1.1
- 2.8
- 1.1
- 1.1
- 5.5
ca 50%
- 3.5
ca 25%
Current balance
foreign currency ratio
Source: Benoit Parisot, “La situation économique et financière de l’Irak à la mi-1990. Quelle influence
sur la décision d’envahir le Koweït?”, Maghreb-Machrek, no. 130 (octobre-décembre 1990), p. 38.
continued with the liberalisation of import trade in 1984. It was designed to stimulate
domestic production and investment. In February 1989, some traditionally state-controlled
prices were liberalised. Prices soared between 6 and 10 times and as a result, income
inequality increased within Iraq. Thus, price controls and subsidies were reintroduced, e.g.
a 30% increase of the cotton price in spring 1991. Two scapegoats were sacrificed: in the
spring of 1989 the Finance Minister, Hikmet Mukhalifm, and the acting Agricultural
Minister, Abdallah Bader Damouk, were removed from their positions. Yet as long as
95% of the national income is linked to oil, which remains nationalised, the private sector
is by definition quite limited. In the repressive environment, entrepreneurs are not induced
to invest, they bid for short-term profit.69
Sandwiched between domestic and foreign requirements, Hussein was, as is usual for
international or regional hegemons, tempted to export the problem. First, Iraq tried,
unsuccessfully, to exhange its sacrifices during the war for advantages from the West.70
Then, the Iraqi government turned to the Gulf countries for more money and investment,
but the flow was relatively scarce. Finally, it attempted to get OPEC to agree to higher
oil prices, stating that every Dollar of a cheaper barrel oil costs around $US 1 billion
income to Iraq.
When nothing worked, Iraq escalated by trying either to get money directly from the
Gulf states (via debt relief and/or new credits) or via higher oil prices. It threatened a
69
70
Efraim Karsh & Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait”, p. 19.
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït”, pp. 6-7.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
change in its own behaviour, becoming, in effect, a professional “racketeer”. Iraqi
requirements and Kuwaiti intransigence triggered the spiral of escalation.
During the First Gulf War, Iraq had arranged that others could take over its OPEC
quota, including Kuwait. When Iraq asked the Gulf states to cancel the war debt, Saudi
Arabia accepted, Kuwait did not. Iraq, furthermore, asked Kuwait to pay for a possible
oil drilling of the Rumaila oil-field that deprived Iraq of some of its oil reserves. During
a visit to Kuwait in February 1990, the Iraqi Oil Minister, Isam Abd al-Rahim al-Chalabi,
apparently pressured his hosts to abide by the new oil quota set by the OPEC earlier that
year. A message was delivered to King Fahd to pressure Kuwait and the UAE to abide.
In May, at a OPEC minister meeting in Geneva, both Iran and Iraq asked for a price of
$18/barrel. The Arab Summit meeting in Baghdad in May 1990 was marked by a clear
statement by Hussein, that the Kuwaiti overproduction was considered a form of economic
war and that Iraq would respond. In June 1990 Dr Sa‘adoun Hammadi, Hussein’s chief
economic adviser, made a Gulf tour that had no effect. Only on 10 July, during a coordination meeting of the Gulf oil ministers in Jeddah were new quotas and prices
accepted.71 The 21 $US/b fixed on 26 July 1990 during the OPEC meeting in Geneva
was already possibly influenced by the deployment of Iraqi forces 10 days earlier at the
Kuwaiti border.72 As Kuwait did not really give in, invasion followed. As Tareq Aziz
later stated, asked to chose between starvation and war, Iraq chose war.73
In short, the concept of “political security” seems critical, stressing the difficult
domestic legitimacy of Saddam Hussein’s regime. In the first Gulf war, where Iran was
consciously attacking the domestic legitimacy of Iraq, “political security” was an external
trigger for war. In the second Gulf war, it would be fairer to say that Iraq itself caused its
political insecurity and war became an expedient to resolve domestic problem. In this
reading, again, aware of its financial and political weakness, Iraq tried to link and use the
leverage of the one issue-area in which it was powerful for controlling other issues.
Thus, the invasion becomes the second-best choice. It is the result of a double power
imbalance in the region. Since Kuwait’s financial power was not “equilibrated” with Iraq,
equilibration was sought via military means. When the client refuses the offer, the shop
was burnt: “… l’opération a été d’abord un racket violent qui a mal tourné.”74
2.3. Oil security
Oil is one of the reasons why the regional structure has acquired a certain independence
after 1973 and why it remains of “vital interest” for the developed countries. The securitisation of economic resources in International Relations took a formidable step forward
in 1973 with the end of Bretton Woods, the resulting pressure on commodity prices, as
71
72
73
74
Efraim Karsh & Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait”, pp. 21-22.
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït”, p. 5.
Janice Gross Stein, “Deterrence and Compellence in the Gulf, 1990-91”, p. 158.
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït”, p. 9.
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for oil, and finally the first successful organisation of an primary resource embargo by the
OPEC.75 The very discussion of economic security is often couched in terms of oil.
This made it all the more natural to expect oil to be one of the alleged triggers of the
conflict, this time not for the Kuwaiti invasion, but for the US response. Different
interpretations were advanced.
The most straightforward explanation was to look at the market shares and export
figures of Arab oil to specific countries in order to assess the exact dependencies. The
result is a story where the US appears relatively independent of Arab oil, whereas
European states and especially Japan import Arab oil massively. The US depends on 9%,
Western Europe on 37% and Japan on 51% of oil coming from the Gulf.76 Consequently,
many commentators in the US dismissed the argument that the US was so keen to react
to Iraqi aggression because of (its own) economic security.77
This view is, of course, much too bilateral and issue-centred. In a coopting move,
many writers seemed to reduce the insights of interdependence to the “securitisation” of
different low politics issues, such as trade or finance. Such an approach is, however,
already part of the Realist literature which, as long as it was influenced by the actual
study of wars, was always aware of the importance of different economic power resources
for national security. National security studies are by definition mercantilist. The
integration of themes of interdependence into security analysis means more.
It also meant, for instance, a linkage with other security issues. The oil price is
important for the international economic conjuncture, pressing on indebted countries of
all sorts and crowding out money that could be invested otherwise than for oil
consumption. In this reading the “Carter Doctrine” has become an incidence of “benign
hegemony.” This doctrine was established shortly after the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan,
when Western politicians feared that the USSR was not much interested in Afghanistan
as such, but in a territorial expansion to a “Warm” Sea in order to diminish its geopolitical
landlock or “icelock” with its Northern harbours. Carter declared on 23 January 1980 that
“any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be
regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an
assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”78 Many of the
commentators, especially in the US, perceived the Gulf crisis as a comparable threat. The
75
It is, however debatable, if the oil embargo as such was a success. Although the oil price quadrupled
(in dollar), the oil companies, also the national ones, were able to redistribute the oil independent of the will
of the producers. On top of it, there were no real shortages: the price rose, but the existing strategic oil
reserves remained untouched.
76
For the figures, not the argument, see Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale
Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts, pp. 36-37.
77
Andrew Bennett, Joseph Lepgold and Daniel Unger, “Burden-Sharing in the Persian Gulf War”,
International Organization, vol. 48, no. 1 (Winter 1994), pp. 39-75.
78
As quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American
National Security Policy (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 345-46.
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theoretical argument for the outbreak of a conflict as a result of a power shift in a specific
security sector, seems to apply to the US reaction.
But finally, there might be another way of linking this economic security issue not
only to another security sector, like military security, but to other security complexes. It
is a long-standing argument that the US uses its leverage in the control of the oil market
to induce reluctant allies to “share” whatever the burden of the day is. This argument took
its origin in the situation starting in 1973, where concomitantly US power seemed to be
in decline and oil became, for a while, a strategically controllable resource.
At that time, the US was preparing itself to accommodate its declining power. The
Nixon administration had come to think of security and power defined in other than
strictly militarily terms and embraced the idea of pentapolarity. In the famous “Year of
Europe” speech delivered by Henry Kissinger on 5 April 1973, and in substantial passages
of Nixon’s foreign policy report for the 1970s delivered to the Congress during May of
the same year, both politicians accepted the idea of a “trilateral” West, that is, a potential
tripolar management of world affairs.79
European governments were estranged and alarmed by the “burden-sharing“ Kissinger
announced in this speech: global interests for the US, regional interests for Europe. If he
had spoken about global versus regional intervention capacities, it would have been less
clumsy. Thus, when the 1973 war broke out, the Europeans were confronted with a region
in which they had major interests. Caught between the attempts to speak with Arab
countries independently from US positions80, and a common Atlantic position, the
European governments did not succeed to unite. Whereas Israel won against Egypt and
Syria, the US disciplined the rising European power.81 Thus, already during the first oil
shock, the US could restore its leadership via the increasing distance between mainly US
oil firms among the “Seven Sisters” and other oil producers and distributors, and because
of its preponderance and control in the International Energy Agency put up in 1974 —
without France.82 The French government especially had accused the US of using its
leverage in the Middle East (during the 1973 crisis) to exhort Western money for US
interests and to streamline Western foreign policy with US aims.
There are obvious difficulties in assessing this kind of arguments, because of the
underlying notion and measure of power. Those who argue that the US (government) lost
control on the oil regime refer generally to the increased energy dependence and reduced
79
See John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 282.
Raymond Aron, Les dernières années du siècle (Paris: Julliard, 1984), p. 157. Since 1973, the
Europeans, some more (France, Italy), some less (The Netherlands, Germany) envisaged a more moderate
position in the Arab-Israeli conflict, that is, the creation of a Palestinian state on the occupied territories.
81
For an example of the mood at the beginning of the 1970s, see Max Kohnstamm & Wolfgang Hager
(eds), Zivilmacht Europa — Supermacht oder Partner? (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1973).
82
Alfred Grosser, Les Occidentaux. Les pays d’Europe et les Etats-Unis depuis la guerre, rev.ed. (Paris:
Fayard, 1981), p. 379. In its attempt to remain relatively independent in its foreign policy elaboration, France
pursued first a policy of oil provisions via bilateral contracts, that turned out expensive once the oil price
slumped, and finally an ambitious nuclear energy policy.
80
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163
direct control of resources after partial nationalisations in producer countries. Those who
see US leadership unchanged refer to the issue of distribution where the US (meaning “US
based” multinationals) are still unchallenged.83 Ghassan Salamé notes accordingly, that
since 1990 the US controls, via Saudi Arabia, the oil market on which their consumption
depends since 1990 for more than 50% (in 1996, maybe 60%).84 Once again, so runs an
analogous argument in 1990, the US could use its higher independence from Arab
countries and its unique diplomatic and military position in the Middle East to armtwist
the West into “burden-sharing”, to compensate the relative economic power decline of the
US. The Gulf Conflict is thus linked via oil to the “trilateral” security complex. The US,
perceiving an economic security threat, might have taken the opportunity to use it for
responding in another theatre not to the South, but to the West.
3. Conclusion: The Gulf in search of an equilibrium
For Neorealists, conflicts are the catalyst of an equilibration of power. Quite logically, the
security complex is conceived as the result of the historical sedimentation of different
prior power shifts and equilibria. A security analysis introduces a long-term dynamic by
projecting the continuity of past conflicts and playing out their contradictions. After the
profound changes in the region, namely the establishment of the Israeli state, decolonisation, and the East-West conflict overlay, three important power shifts have affected the
regional security complex. All three are marked by concomitant shifts in both the regional
and the central balance. 1973, 1979, and 1988 are the three milestones on the way to the
Kuwait invasion.
1973 was important because OPEC and the oil revenues enhanced the autonomy of
the Gulf substructure and the strategic importance of the entire Middle East enormously.
The rich Gulf states became major actors of the regional security structure. The regional
balance of labour from poor countries in exchange for capital from rich countries was
installed. The Western partners became even more dependent on the US. The October
(Yom Kippur) War ended the Egyptian humiliation from 1967. Thus, Egypt could reaffirm
its traditional aspiration of an Arab leader, which was contested by Iraq and Syria.
The twofold events of 1979, Israeli-Egyptian peace and the Iranian Revolution produced a security structure with very issue-dependent alliance formations. In the words of
Udo Steinbach, this rising complexity of security spawned a “diffusion of power”.85 On
the one hand, the Iranian Revolution turned Iran from a status quo into a revolutionary
83
Noam Chomsky writes that “as late as 1973, the U.S. controlled about 90% of Japanese oil.” See his
“After the Cold War: U.S. Middle East Policy”, in Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the
Storm. A Gulf Crisis Reader (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1991), p. 77.
84
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït, p. 5.
85
Udo Steinbach, “Krisenherd Naher Osten. Machtdiffusion als Folge wachsender Komplexität des
internationalen Sicherheitssystems”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. B 18/86 (3 May 1986), pp. 1-18.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
power.86 It added a new ideological dimension to the Middle East conflicts, thus complicating the already intricate regional power plays even more. Although the ideological
conflict between Shi‘ite Islamism and Panarabism would have it that every Arab nation
joined Iraq in this conflict, Syria, Libya, and South Yemen allied with Iran. Israel leaned
towards Iran. Egypt supported Iraq in the conflict, although the latter had done most to
kick Egypt out of the Arab League. The Gulf states helped both Iraq and Syria (which
supports Iran), deriving their Arab credentials merely from their unvaried anti-Israel stand.
Seen independently, one can find the rationale also in terms of power equilibrations. Yet,
the power game is so multi-layered to deceive easy front-lines.
On the other hand, the separate peace between Egypt and Israel, consummated with
the aborted talks on a Palestinian solution from May 1980, marked a temporary end for
the Egyptian aspiration to Arab leadership. It took the major Arab power away from the
structuring of the region and pushed the moderate oil countries, as well as Jordan and
Morocco, to ally with countries they usually opposed. The result was double. First, Egypt
left a power vacuum in Arabia which was officially endorsed by its exclusion from the
Arab League in March 1979.87 Second, since Egypt was the actor bridging both the Gulf
and the Middle East, the anti-Israel front and the moderate Arab countries, its demise
furthered a division of the Middle East into two major blocs: the Gulf and the Near East.
The centre of the Arab nation moves east. Syria and Iraq waited to fill the power vacuum
and to take the lead. Their relations deteriorated rapidly in the second half of 1979, after
Iraq accuses Syria to have helped a coup against Saddam Hussein in July 1979.88 Since
both superpowers had “spent their regional credit” in the Gulf, the US for Camp David
(1978), the USSR for the invasion in Afghanistan (1979/1980), Iraq took the initiative to
fill the power vacuum left.
1988 or: the end of the Iran-Iraq war in an international climate of East-West détente,
was the last milestone on the way to the Kuwait invasion. The war had frozen or concentrated the power of the two potential Gulf hegemons. The end of the war and the relative
Iranian defeat left Iraq strong, but financially highly dependent on its neighbours. The
Gulf states tried to coopt Iraq through the establishment of the Arab Cooperation Council
(Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq), founded in 1989. This was, in other words, an attempt to
institutionalise and ease the racket system of the first Gulf war after the war had finished.
It did not work. Sandwiched between domestic and external demands, the highly inflexible
Iraqi government broke out of the system. The finance-labour balance was not enough to
stabilise the security system. Egypt’s continuing and Arafat’s increasing isolation after the
86
For this issue of change unaccounted by Neorealism, see also Fred Halliday, “‘The sixth great power’:
on the study of revolutions and international relations”, Review of International Studies, vol. 16, no. 3 (July
1990), pp. 207-221. This is difficult to include into a mechanic power analysis, less into a security analysis,
because it takes the identity of actors as given.
87
88
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale, und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts, p. 12.
Udo Steinbach, “Krisenherd Naher Osten”, pp. 6-7.
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165
abortive peace talks (Baker Plan) furthered the division between the two subsystems of
the Near East and the Gulf. At the same time, the USSR’s “New Thinking” with the retreat from the Cold War logic and of any regional expansionism left the US in a unipolar
position. Iraq filled a regional power disequilibrium when the division of the Gulf
subsystem both from the central and Near East balance seemed to isolate it from foreign
intervention. The response came from the central balance.
In this synthesis of the Gulf conflict’s origins, all the important items of the specific
“policy-contingency framework” are given. The important and mutually valued resources,
whose control defines the historically and regionally contingent potential power, are
finance capital, oil, military forces, ideological legitimacy, political legitimacy.
Neorealist explanations of the origins of the Gulf conflict link the distribution of
mutually valued resources (objective security), to the assessment of bilateral or multilateral
situations of interdependencies, and then to (subjective) security assessments that trigger
the conflict. If a conflict arises that cannot be linked to objective security considerations,
then the balance of power argumentation in its mechanistic sense cannot be held to be a
sufficient explanation. This point is important. It is said that Neorealism would be able
to show the range of possible options. Neorealism at its most fundamental level shows
which actions are possible and which ruled out from the outset. Together with its unitlevel assumptions, Neorealism, as much as the Morgenthau-kind of traditional Realism,
can assess the options that it would be rational to pursue. This argument runs with a
ceteris paribus clause, that is, if one actor is not pursuing the national interest, but all the
others do, the first will be punished. This is the “logic of power.” Yet, if the others do not
or do not want to apply their resources, the whole mechanism collapses. Neorealism as
an approach of the systemic level needs its enactment at the unit-level. Since actors are
not mechanically following a short-term rationality, Neorealism can only make sense of
what happened ex post.
Thus, a security analysis cannot stop here. It is the temporary stop of a rational actor
model. It can still be supplemented by a number of ad hoc explanations all based on a
form of misguided subjective assessment of security or insecurity. There is, first, the
possibility of complete miscalculation or insufficient decision-making bodies. Then there
is the possibility of straightforward irrationality. But all this is outside the power structure.
It refers to the “unit-level.” From now on the Neorealist story has to be told on the level
of action. We are not interested in the mechanics of the mutual adjustments of the
countries, but in the actual behaviour of governments. The story is now told in terms of
diplomacy and warfare.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
9
The dynamics of the conflict:
overcoming the “Vietnam Syndrome”
The analysis of the power structure was necessary to see the “balance of threats”, that is,
the security of those that resorted to conflict. Implicitly, this introduces the actors of the
conflict. Now, turning to the level of action, power analysis is concerned about one thing:
Do the actors involved in conflict convert their anticipated power resources into means
to resolve the conflict in their interest? How? Which regimes have constrained a
potentially unfettered power contest?
Interestingly, the whole dynamic of the Second Gulf War concentrates on the capacity
to mobilise US superiority, a clear reaction against the perceived Vietnam Syndrome. In
terms of power analysis, overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome means resolving the “paradox
of unrealised power”. Baldwin insisted that power resources should only be addressed in
their policy-contingency framework. The mapping of the regional security complex is a
partial specification of this framework: it names the relevant actors, their conflict-relevant
resources, the scope and domain of these resources, and the relative costs that an actor
would incur in breaking a relation that is the anticipated power response of the “powers”
in the system (See Figure 9.1).
The translation dynamics of a Neorealist power analysis has as its main focus the way
the US succeeded in managing its power in diplomacy and war. The story is the successstory of a superpower that for once lived up to expectations. The war was waged at three
fronts, all conditioned by the alleged US failures in the Vietnam war: the allies, the
domestic and international public opinion, and the military front in Kuwait/Irak. The best
way to describe them is thus in negative terms. The first war-story is about diplomacy.
It is called “intervene, but not alone.” It is about avoiding international isolation and to
getting others to contribute to world policing. Then, “watch the stab in the back”, from
the media, public opinion and Congress. The third lesson is the avoidance of gradual
escalation which was supposedly the strategy in Vietnam.
166
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Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
167
Figure 9.1 Power dynamics: the translation process
1. The multilateralisation of the conflict
The end of the US-Soviet tension made a new kind of superpower-management possible.
As in the Korea-war, the US was able to orchestrate a multilateral response without the
USSR intervening or blocking it. Yet, as in the aftermath of the October (Yom Kippur)
War in 1973, both superpowers would incite, watch and guarantee a post-war settlement
in the form of a regional security conference.1 The underlying logic seemed to be that as
long as there was a central equilibrium, the US tried to coopt the USSR into a superpower
management following Western rules. When the US was hegemonic, it preferred unilaterally guided (although multilaterally orchestrated) actions without the support of the
USSR. The Gulf Conflict appears as a special case where an asymmetric common
management was established although the USSR knew its secondary position. The USSR
ceased to be a comparable actor in the Gulf and saw its regional interest shifting to
Central Asia.2 The logic of the Cold War seemed no longer to apply for the Middle East.
1
It is often forgotten that the conference that started in Madrid is not the first of its kind. It is a replay
under some changed circumstances, and with some new actors of the abortive Geneva Middle East conference
in 1975.
2
Roland Lomme, “L’échec d’une stratégie soviétique”, Politique Étrangère, vol. 56, no. 2 (Été 1991),
p. 437.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
On the theoretical level, this part touches many of those analytical frameworks which
are the centre of present academic debates. At first, multilateralism deals with questions
of cooperation and, since Neorealism is build on an economic approach, thus of collective
action. The Realist presumption of anarchy, which underlies both Neorealists and Neoinstitutionalists, makes conflict the basic feature of international society. The fact that such a
heterogeneous coalition could have been forged and sustained over a not-so-short period
of time is the riddle to be explained.
The two schools of thought differ in the basic reasons for multilateralisation. To use
the established wording, the one could be called idealist in the Grotian, not the Kantian
tradition. The “international society” has moved to a stage where both the blatant
disrespect of state sovereignty and gun-boat diplomacy are no longer possible. The
translation of US or Western power into outcomes needed acquiescence on the international scene. International legitimation through established channels is the inevitable basis
of such a management. The story of the Second Gulf War becomes
(1) a chronicle of hope that the UN would for the first time play the more peace-enforcing
role for which it was (also) set up; and
(2) an indication of how established patterns of trust can sustain the working of binding
norms the “international society”. It is a story about the potential of learning.3
The second interpretation is more Realist, that is, it has its doubts about the validity
of these norms. Whereas Institutionalists tend to apprehend possible long-term dynamics
of norm-building, Realists tend to analyse every collective action, conflict or cooperation,
independently of the precedent one. Not learning, but the continuous replay of power
politics is the basic assumption. Realists would point to a consistent US move to
“unilateral intervention”, not caring much if the invasion of Grenada, or the bombing of
Tripoli or Panama conformed with the norms of the international society. For the more
Realism-inclined regime analysts, multilateralisation is either an indication of hegemonic
leadership or of rational balance of power politics. The underlying power argument can
be twofold and is the core of the present debate on US hegemonic decline. For the one
side, the Gulf Conflict required multilateralisation for mere reasons of military and
political costs. This means that the US was not powerful enough to sustain a full-fledged
war alone, both for its financial costs and for the political costs of the possible isolation
it would have entailed. Yet, one could also see therein the ultimate power of a hegemon
which controls the conflict management and let others pay for it.4 This perspective of the
power dynamics tells a story of hegemonic leadership, free-riding, and “burden-sharing.”
3
For this renewed stress on “learning”, see Robert Keohane & Joseph Nye Jr, “Power and Interdependence Revisited”, International Organization, vol. 41, no. 4 (Autumn 1987), pp. 725-53. For an application
to organization, see Ernst B. Haas, When Knowledge is Power. Three Models of Change in International
Organizations (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1990). For an idea of learning as a civilisational
process, see Dieter Senghaas, Konfliktformationen im internationalen System (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1987),
Part 1.
4
Once again, power arguments are not decisive.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
169
1.1. The UN against Iraq
US Secretary of State James Baker and his Soviet counterpart Edward Shevardnadze were
discussing in Irkutsk, Siberia, how to strengthen their collaboration in regional conflictmanagement, when they were informed of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. They interrupted
their talks and headed back to their governments. Before leaving, their common statement
emphasised that both powers took this act very seriously and would collaborate closely
to coordinate a common response. The same day, the United Nations Security Council
(UNSC) unanimously voted a resolution that condemned Iraq’s attack (Yemen was absent
during the vote). The following day, the US and the USSR pleaded to the international
community to take “concrete measures” against Iraq. The US decided to send a naval
force to the Gulf.5
From the first day of the conflict, many important foreign policy moves were
“insured” ex ante or ex post by twelve resolutions of the UNSC before the outbreak of
“Desert Storm” (see Table 9.1). James Baker is reported to have initiated the idea of using
the UN in an aggressive way, against the opinion of both the White House and Pentagon.6
The diplomatic efforts in the UN were designed to isolate Iraq and possible allies, and to
legitimate US intervention under its own and not UN auspices.
This is not the place to make an extensive account of all the countries the US tried
and succeeded to influence in order to get UN backing. The USSR is the most prominent
case, although one could reasonably argue that it had its own interests as a regional power
in the Middle East, bordering its Muslim Republics. Generally, two Soviet stakes were
quoted. James Baker could offer to the USSR $US 6 billion financial aid paid by the Gulf
States in consideration of the Soviet vote. Yet, the most visible quid pro quo between
Gorbachov and Bush was that the US and the West in general was remarkably quiet with
regard to the Soviet handling of the Baltic declarations of independence, in particular
when special Soviet units attacked the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, occupied the TV/Radio
station and just stopped short of overthrowing the Landsbergis government.7
Whereas the USSR’s new role could be expected, China was able to exchange its vote
on the important resolution that allowed the use of force “if necessary”, for a restoration
of its international status after the isolation that followed the army crackdown on
Tienanmen Square in June 1989. Thereby, the Gulf crisis accelerated a return to normality
that had started with the restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in July 1990, with
Indonesia in August 1990.8 The economic sanctions imposed on China, such as delays
of new World Bank loans and the freeze on most military cooperation, were anyway of
little weight: ordinary exports to the US were not included and in fact the trade surplus
5
“Sept mois de crise”, Le Monde, 1 March 1991.
U.S. News and World Report, Triumph Without Victory, pp. 35-36.
7
See for instance: Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War (New York: Henry Hilt and Company, 1992),
p. 210.
8
Singapore followed a few months later.
6
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European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
170
Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Table 9.1 The UNSC Resolutions during the Gulf Conflict
1. 2 August 1990: Immediate retreat of
Iraq from Kuwait (resolution 660, accepted
by 14 votes, Yemen was not present), where
the Security Council (SC), in virtue of art. 39
and 40 of the UN Charta, demanded the
immediate and unconditional retreat of all
Iraqi forces from Kuwait and the return to the
status quo.
2. 6 August 1990: Economic sanctions
(resolution 661, accepted by 13 votes, Cuba
and Yemen abstained), in which the SC asked
for a commercial, financial and military
boycott, including Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil.
3. 9 August 1990: Annexation of
Kuwait declared nil (resolution 662, unanimously accepted).
4. 18 August 1990: Against the detention of hostages (resolution 664, unanimously
accepted). The SC demanded that Iraq
authorises the citizens of third countries to
leave Iraq or Kuwait.
5. 25 August 1990: Authorization of
naval blockade to enforce the economic
embargo (resolution 665, 2 abstentions of
Cuba and Yemen).
6. 14 September 1990: Food aid (resolution 666, 2 contrary votes by Cuba and
Yemen), where the delivering of food aid to
Iraq and Kuwait was agreed only under the
auspices of international bodies like the UN
or the International Red Cross.
7. 16 September 1990: Condemnation
of Iraqi attacks on foreign embassies (resolution 667, unanimity).
8. 24 September 1990: Internal resolution of the embargo (resolution 669, unanimity), where the “Sanctions Committee”
was asked to examine all the claims of those
countries who suffer economically from the
embargo.
9. 25 September 1990: Air embargo
(resolution 670, Cuba against).
10. 29 September 1990: War damages
(resolution 674, 2 abstentions from Cuba and
Yemen). The SC reminds Iraq of its responsibility under international law to repair the
damages it inflicted to Kuwait and its citizens.
11. 29 November 1990: Preservation of
demographic composition of the population
of Kuwait (resolution 677, unanimity).
12. 29 November 1990: Authorization
to use force for the liberation of Kuwait
(resolution 678, 2 contrary votes by Cuba and
Yemen, 1 abstention by China), where the SC
puts an ultimatum: if Iraq does not comply to
the UNSC resolutions by 15 January 1991,
the SC authorises all countries on the side of
Kuwait “to use all necessary means to uphold
and implement resolution 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore peace
and international security in the region.”
13. 3 April 1991: Conditions of ceasefire (resolution 687)
rose sharply from $US 3.5 billion in 1988 to around $US 10 billion in 1990.9 Where the
US had most leverage was on questions of international prestige. China resented being
ignored in important international or even Asian affairs, as for instance the Cambodia or
Afghanistan settlement.10 In order to help China get rid of its international pariah image,
the Bush administration announced on 27 November, one day before the decisive Security
Council vote, that China’s Foreign Minister Qian Qichen had been invited for talks in
Washington on 30 November. This represented the highest-level official meeting between
9
Nicholas D. Kristof, “China gains in Mideast crisis but loses Cold War benefits”, The New York Times,
11 November 1990, p. 11.
10
Nicholas D. Kristof, “Beijing thawing diplomatic freeze. Western and Asian countries renewing
relations as Li triumphs on tour”, The New York Times, 15 August 1990.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
171
the two governments since June 1989. After this announcement, “Chinese diplomats at the
United Nations, who had been wavering on whether to support the proposed Security
Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, signalled definitely that they
would not oppose it.”11 This move of the Bush administration was immediately followed
by the approval on 4 December of a World Bank-sponsored $US 114.3 million loan to
China. It was the first time the administration did not object to other than humanitarian
assistance to China since Tienanmen Square.12
One could go on with a list of all the pressures to which the countries of the Security
Council were exposed. Columbia, Ethiopia and Zaire were offered new aid packages,
access to World Bank credits or IMF loans for their vote. Columbia was quietly allowed
to renounce its treaty with the US to extradite major drug traffickers to the US. Malaysia,
another member of the UNSC, got a break on textile import quotas.13 Cuba and Yemen
were threatened, with no success. When Yemen voted against the resolution, “within
minutes the Yemen ambassador was told by an U.S. diplomat that it was the “most
expensive vote you ever cast” and within days Yemen’s $70 million in U.S. aid and vital
financial aid from the Gulf states was terminated.”14
There are two important points for the power analysis of the Gulf that derive from this
account of multilateralisation. First, it shows that “linkage” of power resources happened
in two ways. There was a link of power resources from one issue area (international
finance) to another (international politics). However, this may only be one part in a chain
of different power resource conversions. After all the vote in the UNSC was just a step
in a larger conflict, in which the US was able to mobilise its resources in different regimes
to prepare the ground for a successful military intervention, on which the administration
attempted to “cash in” politically and economically.
This links up with our discussion on overall-power and fungibility (see chapter 6).
Military power cannot necessarily be translated in other issue areas. It should be understood as the capacity to be present in different issue areas, and to be able to link them.
“Superpowers” are defined by this capacity. If one forgives the exceptionalist tone of
some US commentators, the following quote reflects the point:
American preeminence is based on the fact that it is the only country with the military,
diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in
whatever part of the world it chooses to involve itself.15
11
Thomas L. Friedman, “Chinese Official is Invited to Washington in Response to Gulf Stance”, The New
York Times, 28 November 1990, p. 15.
12
Traditionally, China received World Bank loans of around US$ 2 billion per year. See Stephen Labaton,
“World Bank Lends China $114 Million”, The New York Times, 5 December 1990, p. 13.
13
U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, pp. 94-95.
14
Steve Niva, “The Battle is Joined”, in Phyllis Bennis & Michel Moushabeck (eds) Beyond the Storm.
A Gulf Crisis Reader (New York: Oliver Branch Press, 1991), p. 64.
15
Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment”, p. 24.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
172
Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
The other important point comes back to the initial neorealist-neoinstitutionalist debate.
Some commentators believe that the recourse to a “fake” multilateralism is due to
domestic US public opinion that just loves idealist stances.16 Yet, if Vietnam is the
reference for the understanding of the Gulf Conflict dynamics, it seems more sensible to
presuppose that it is in the long-term US interest in the region not to appear as an isolated
full-fledged imperialist. The Vietnam experience indicates the possible diplomatic backlashes of such a position. The need to multilateralise meant especially the need to coopt
Arab partners into the coalition. These needs constrained the US to a certain UN
conformity.17
Undoubtedly, the constraints might always been thrown off, but the relevant issue was
how great a price would be paid for doing so. Even those who resisted tying American
policy to the UN, as the architects of the new world order did, nevertheless conceded
that the tie might well be important for maintaining domestic support for an interventionist policy.18
In order to focus all US power, it was important to free the other fronts. A possibly
unilaterally led war presupposed a multilateral diplomacy. Otherwise, the “cost” for
intervention would have been higher. In other words, the UN had become an obligatory
passage point for an efficient power management of the Kuwait war. The UN mattered
both because it channelled US action, but also because its institutionalised channels
speeded up the forging of cooperation and thus US intervention.19
1.2. Forging a coalition
If the obligatory passage point of the UN can be expected to concentrate some attention
of Neoinstitutionalist rational choice scholars, the Neorealist rational choice agenda will
focus on the Gulf conflict as an incident of alliance theory in general, and of hegemonic
leadership, free riding and burden-sharing in particular.
Again, this is not the place to enumerate all the coalition partners involved. I will pick
those for which theories of collective action reserve a special role: the hegemonic leader
and the free-riders. Already from the theoretical setting, it should be expected, that one
of the major themes of the analyses of the Gulf conflict will be burden-sharing.20
16
Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment”, p. 26.
Hans Arnold, “Die Golf-Krise und die Vereinten Nationen”, Außenpolitik, vol. 42. no. 1 (1991), p. 77.
18
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation. The New World Order and
America’s Purpose (New York: Council of Foreign Relations Press, 1992), pp. 41-42.
19
This corresponds to Keohane’s minimal version of regimes as intervening variable between the
international division of power and the behaviour of international actors, where regimes “are less important
as centralized enforcers of rules than as facilitators of agreement among governments.” See Robert O.
Keohane, After Hegemony. Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984), pp. 64, 238.
20
For such an approach, see Andrew Bennett, Joseph Lepgold and Daniel Unger, “Burden-Sharing in the
Persian Gulf War”.
17
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
173
The following short account will concentrate on these issues. More precisely: why and
how did the coalition partners join the coalition (alliance theory); why and how was the
cost shared (collective action)?
Although the attempt to multilateralise the burden of the conflict makes it obvious that
the US should get Arab partners to join the coalition; it is not so clear why they should
have obliged. Traditionally, Arab countries have been suspicious of being used by foreign
powers. Although the major coalition partners Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, were all
wary of Saddam Hussein’s foreign policies, Egypt had to take a lead in splitting the Arab
world, Saudi Arabia had to accept foreign troops on the Holy Land, and Syria had to
realign with an outspoken traditional enemy, the US.
Syria is the least critical case. It has already been dealt with in the above section on
realignments after the end of the superpower competition in the region. Furthermore, Syria
was keen on a quid pro quo which would leave its Lebanese policy undisturbed.
Egypt might have been induced by tough US pressures.21 It is highly vulnerable and
dependent on US financial aid and other help and had thus only limited room of manoeuvre. This would be the most “rational” and most power-based explanation. Of course, if
it were true, the US and Egypt could not admit it. Mubarak repeatedly stressed that he
found himself belied by Saddam Hussein’s assurance he would not invade Kuwait, although it seems that Saddam Hussein had given this promise on condition that his aims
could be reached diplomatically. Egypt’s vigorous stand was paid off by high war dividends. The US took the lead and cancelled $US 7 billion military debt (which implies
economies of debt servicing of $US 780 million for 1991). Saudi Arabia followed suit the
cancelling $US 6 billion of debt and giving $US 2 billion in aid. This was followed again
by a Kuwaiti aid of $US 500 million. Since september 1990, the negotiations within the
IMF have gradually shown increasing comprehension for the Egyptian case.22
The most critical case is Saudi Arabia. Many commentators stress the point that Saudi
Arabia was initially not willing to accept US troops. Its traditional policy was a form of
check-book diplomacy. Its reading at the beginning of the conflict seemed to have been
that Iraq, which had recently signed a treaty of mutual non-aggression with Saudi Arabia,
and not with Kuwait, was punishing Kuwait for what it perceived as permanent humiliations. The aims, according to the apparent Saudi understanding of the conflict, were
limited to Northern Kuwait and a new money settlement. There was no overriding sense
of national vulnerability. After all, these border disputes had been common currency since
Kuwaiti independence. Iraq had not officially nullified Kuwait’s sovereignty. It took a
gage or “security” for a future bargaining, putting Kuwait in a position in which it could
21
John K. Cooley, “Pre-war Gulf diplomacy”, Survival vol. XXXIII, no. 2 (March-April 1991), pp. 125139, reports a senior Arab source insisting that John Kelly had sent a secret message to Cairo threatening with
aid cuts. Both countries deny it.
22
Alexandre Buccianti & Yves Heller, “Les dividendes du conflit en Egypte”, Le Monde, 27 février 1991.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
174
Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
not but take Iraq seriously.23 The possible invasion of Saudi Arabia was the only major
argument for the quick decision to deploy troops in the Gulf.
Did Iraq really intend to invade Saudi Arabia? For the staunch military observers,
there is no doubt. Saddam Hussein planned to drive to a line south of Dharan to seize
Saudi ports and oil. That Iraq paused for so long before launching its attack is explained
away by insufficient logistics and troops that paused for looting Kuwait.24 This is
contradicted by articles appearing in The Times and The New York Times from 3 and 4
August reporting very unaggressive behaviour by the Iraqi occupation troops.25 Other
commentators refer to US intelligence that reported about Iraqi strategic planning of a
Kuwaiti invasion going back to two, and perhaps five years, and which has been exercised
in special manoeuvres.26
Then there are the famous intelligence photos showing the massing of Iraqi troops at
the Saudi border. Cheney took those with him, when he convinced King Fahd on 6
August in Jeddah to accept foreign troops on his territory. Although it is considered
difficult to judge from such photos, and although future shots did not corroborate the first
US ones27, the immediate response had to rely heavily on them. Yet, why then did Iraq
not attack the US forces that arrived on 8 August? For some experts, the so-called
“minimum-deterrence force” would be just a “speed bump”, its 40 000 troops not able to
defend the territory against a full Iraqi attack.28 Since Saddam Hussein thought that the
US could not sustain a war with high casualties, this would have been perfectly rational
behaviour. Yet, only some days later, on 9 August, troops of the Iraqi Republican Guard,
the backbone of Iraqi military force and vital for any offensive option, were moving northwards.29
The important point to note for the study of alliance dynamics is, however, the following. Once the US had decided for Desert Shield and persuaded Saudi Arabia of the
immediate Iraqi attack, the Saudis asked for three conditions, namely (1) that Arab
countries should be part of the troops, (2) that Saudi Arabia had a veto on offensive
options from the Saudi territory, and less officially (3) that the US would come “for
good”, that is, keep their promise and stay firm. The last condition is probably the most
important one: once committed to the West, the Saudis must push for the complete isolation of Iraq, politically and in fact also militarily, in order to be able to face Iraq once the
conflict is over.
23
More Machiavellian readings suggest that a weakened Kuwait would not only strengthen Iraq but get
squeezed in-between Iraq — and Saudi Arabia.
24
Norman Friedman, Desert Victory. The War for Kuwait (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press,
1991), pp. 40-41.
25
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, p. 15.
26
Gunther Hellmann, “Der Krieg um Kuwait: Katalysator einer „neuen Weltordnung“ oder Vorbote neuer
Konflikte?”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. B 7-8/91 (8 February 1991), p. 13.
27
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, pp. 20-22.
28
U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, pp. 100-02.
29
ibid., pp. 96-98.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
175
By doing this, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the US in fact reduced their own diplomatic
options. Once Saudi Arabia agreed and the US announced it publicly on 9 August, the day
before the Arab summit, there was no way back: the fate of the Arab coalition partners
was inextricably linked to US success. If the US could not afford to retreat without
regaining Kuwaiti independence, the Arab coalition partners, and in particular Saudi
Arabia, could not even conceive of such an option. Their alliance with the US would have
isolated them regionally, threatened their legitimacy as the guard of Mecca and Medina
(thus making them prone to Iranian pressure), and left them alone with a major and
resentful enemy on its border. The above-mentioned “Al Capone”-theory would be more
effectively institutionalised than without the US engagement. Thus, US insistence had
created a conflict dynamic which produced an overriding coincidence of interests. In the
language of alliance theories, Saudi Arabia was caught in an alliance security dilemma:
the more it committed itself to the US stance, the more its security improved, but also the
more it got “entrapped” into the US alliance. Power, thus dependence-oriented alliance analysis of the Gulf conflict should concentrate not only on static dependence patterns
before, but also their change during the conflict.30
It seems without doubt that the US was eager to exploit the opportunity to realise its
objective of a permanent military presence in the Gulf. James Baker indicated this aim
already in June 1990.31 At the same time, the Saudi and Egyptian incidents seem to
indicate that the US, in particular James Baker, consciously avoided any second diplomatic
track by other countries or multilateral fora, like the UN. With the entrapment of Saudi
Arabia and Egypt, the short effort of forging an intra-Arab solution had come to an end.
Aware of the strains this “entrapment” entailed for many of the regional coalition
members, on 25 September, President Bush announced the creation of the Gulf Financial
Crisis Coordinating Group (GFCCG). It was largely politically motivated to smooth the
impact of the embargo on regional trade partners of Iraq. As of 11 March 1991, $US 11.7
billion of the $US 15.7 billion aid-packages pledged by different countries were
committed to Egypt, Jordan and Turkey.32
US diplomacy geared to European countries was either asking military or financial
contributions. The multilateralisation and UN roofing allowed many countries to join the
largest coalition ever organised since 1945 (see Table 9.2). The US made it clear from the
very beginning that those countries that were rich enough to contribute had a duty to do
so. This was especially true of Germany and Japan, which for constitutional and other
reasons were not able to take part in Desert Shield or Storm militarily.
30
For an interesting comparison of different alliance approaches applied to the Gulf conflict, but for a
static presentation of “alliance dependence”, see Andrew Bennett, Joseph Lepgold and Daniel Unger, “BurdenSharing in the Persian Gulf War”, pp. 39-75.
31
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts, p. 40, fn. 42.
32
Isabelle Grunberg, “The Persian Gulf War and the Myth of Lost Hegemony”, in R. Morgan, J.
Lorentzen, A. Leander & S. Guzzini (eds), New Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War World. Essays for Susan
Strange (London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), p. 250.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
176
Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Table 9.2 Contributions in kind: Countries that had sent forces or medical teams to the
Gulf region by the time the ground war started.
300 ground troops
Afghanistan
One frigate and one corvette
Argentina
One guided-missile destroyer, one frigate and a support ship
Australia
2.000 ground troops
Bangladesh
Two minehunters and a support ship
Belgium
43.000 troops: Army, Navy and Air Force
Britain
3 ships, 24 fighter jets
Canada
200 anti-chemical warfare specialists
Czechoslovakia
One corvette
Denmark
40.000 ground troops
Egypt
16.000 troops: Air Force and Navy
France
One frigate
Greece
10.000 troops: ships and planes
Gulf countries
(Bahrain, Omar, Quatar, UAE)
Medical personnel
Hungary
Ships and planes
Italy
7.000 troops, planes
Kuwait
1.300 ground troops
Morocco
Two frigates and a supply ship
Netherlands
Planes
New Zealand
500 ground troops
Niger
One coast guard ship
Norway
11.000 ground troops
Pakistan
Medical personnel
Philippines
Two rescue ships
Poland
Medical team and anti-chemical warfare specialists
Rumania
118.000 troops, planes.
Saudi Arabia
One frigate and two corvettes
Spain
500 ground troops
Senegal
30 Medical personnel
Sierra Leone
Medical team
Singapore
Planes
South Korea
Field hospital and medical personnel
Sweden
15.000 ground troops
Syria
More than 540.000 troops: Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force
United States
Source: “Gulf Allies and the Forces Deployed”, The New York Times, 24 March 1991, p. 18 L.
Japan had already pledged $US 4 billion to aid the gulf mobilisation in 1990, half of
it for economic aid to the region and the other for assistance to the military buildup,
restricted to payment for transportation and other non-combat costs.33 Domestic
33
Steven R. Weisman, “Test for Japan’s Leader. Kaifu Faces Growing Difficulty in Building A Consensus
on Tokyo’s Role in Gulf War”, The New York Times, 8 February 1991, p. A7.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
177
opposition did not permit the Japanese government to send military forces. By February
1991, when the Japanese Parliament was deciding whether to follow the request by the
United States for a supplementary $US 9 billion in Japanese aid34, the result of the vote
was far from clear. A small party whose swing votes were necessary to pass the Upper
House, could condition the aid, so as to link it to “logistic” and not “lethal” use.
The total cost of Desert Shield is estimated at about $US 10 billion, those for Desert
Storm before the outbreak of the ground war between $US 37.5 and $US 75 billions.
When President Bush presented the balance of the war cost on 22 February 1991, he
indicated $US 52 billion, including overpriced fuel costs. The final cost seems to have
been $US 61.1 billion.35 Military power was exchanged for Arab, German and Japanese
money. The UK got by February 1991 $US 1.04 billion from the FRG and $US 509 million from Saudi Arabia, as well as $US 1.3 billion from Kuwait, for a total cost of $US
2.5 billion (up to the end of January). France’s total estimated costs of about $US 1.2
billion were largely covered by a Kuwaiti aid of $US 1 billion.36 (See also Table 9.3).
Table 9.3 Contributions in cash or in kind to the United States ($US millions)
Contributor
Saudi Arabia
Kuwait
UAE
Japan
Germany
Korea
Others
Total
*
**
***
****
Commitments*
16.839
16.057
4.088
10.012
6.572
355
30
53.953
Cash**
12.809
16.015
3.870
9.440
5.772
150
8
48.064
In-Kind**
4.030
43
218
571
683***
101****
22
5.669
Total
16.839
16.058
4.088
10.012
6.455
251
29
53.733
Commitments do not include pledges to other countries
Cash received as of 13/4/92, In-Kind as of 31/3/92
Does not include $US 200 million in in-kind donations, declined after war
Does not include $US 200 million in in-kind donations DoD could not use. However, the
Korean Government had agreed to contribute an equal amount for material and services for
non-Desert Shield/Storm costs
(Addition errors are due to rounding.)
Source: Isabelle Grunberg, “The Persian Gulf War and the Myth of Lost Hegemony”, p. 255.
34
Steven R. Weisman, “Japan’ Premier Backs a Compromise on Aid for the Gulf War”, The New York
Times, 2 February, p. A6, reports that after a first denial, the US made the request public.
35
See respectively, “Qui paie quoi?”, Le Monde, 3-4 février 1991; Mario Pianta, “La guerra? Un vero
affare”, Il Manifesto, 10 March 1991, p. 21.; and Theo Sommer, “Schöne neue Welt, bloß eine Traum?”
(Brave New World, only a dream?), Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 32 (2-8 August 1991), p. 4.
36
Érik Israelewicz, “Le prix de l’engagement”, Le Monde, 27 février 1991, p. 19.
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1.3. Shortcircuiting competing diplomacies
After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Kuwait remained largely isolated within the Arab
world. On 3 August, during a special session of the Arab League Council, only the United
Arab Emirates responded positively to the Kuwaiti demands for the restoration of its
sovereignty. In a frantic effort to come to a settlement, King Hussein shuttled between
Baghdad and Arab capitals to organise a mini-summit in Riyadh for 4 August. Saddam
Hussein agreed, if the Arab League Council would not condemn him. By this time,
unexpectedly or under US pressure, Mubarak had changed his position.37 He pushed for
an inter-Arab division and aligned with what was seen as the US position. The minisummit was cancelled. King Hussein efforts were in vain. Then, the US convinced King
Fahd in Jeddah of the need to accept US troops. The next day, Iraq annexed Kuwait. The
Arab summit conference on 10 August could only make the Arab split public. Overriding
the unanimity norm of the Arab summit, it accepted a resolution condemning Iraq, and
legitimating the Arab presence in Desert Shield. Arab pre-war diplomacy had come to its
final end.
In the same vein, US diplomacy attempted to avoid any diplomatic “split” of the
coalition, a policy that implied the preponderance of US foreign policy objectives in
coalition goals. Not being able to avoid the UN, the US joined the multilateral train as
engine driver. Other diplomatic efforts had to be subsumed under US direction: the
French, the Soviet and the remaining independent Arab diplomacy (Jordan, PLO).
French and Soviet diplomacy followed a double track of negotiated resolution and
alliance solidarity. French diplomacy would have by far preferred an inner-Arab
solution.38 War was considered a no-win solution, at least by the French Minister of
Defence during Desert Shield, Jean-Pierre Chevènement.
… la guerre serait un jeu où l’on perdrait à tous les coups, soit que Saddam Hussein tire
son épingle du jeu, soit que l’Irak, écrasé, l’intégrisme se trouve avivé, et fouetté dans
la monde arabe. Donc il fallait tout faire pour empêcher la guerre.39
Consequently, French diplomacy mobilised behind the economic embargo which had been
decided on by the UN, and tried to link the Gulf security to other subsystems of the
security complex: the Near East with the Israeli-Arab conflict and Lebanon. In his famous
speech at the General Assembly of the UN on 24 September 1990, President François
Mitterrand presented a plan in four steps: (1) Iraq accepts to retreat from Kuwait; (2)
actual retreat linked to a democratisation of Kuwait (elections); (3) bilateral negotiations
to settle the conflict whose solution should be guaranteed and supervised by an inter-
37
The Egyptian account of this event differs. Here, Mubarak had never agreed to King Hussein to avoid
a public condemnation against Saddam Hussein.
38
Frédéric Prater, “La France et la crise du Golfe”, Politique Étrangère, vol. 56, no. 2 (Été 1991), p. 442.
39
“Ce qui manque à notre république, c’est le citoyen”, Entretien avec Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Le
Nouveau Politis, no. 177 (Avril 1992), p. 22.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
179
national conference; finally (4) a kind of Middle Eastern Conference for Security and
Cooperation to supervise mutual arms reduction. A similar diplomatic opening was
repeated in a last minute opening on 13 January. Yet, when Saddam Hussein seemed not
to be answering favourably to any of the diplomatic opening gestures, the French position
increasingly moved toward the US one.
These most prominent diplomatic attempts were not exactly welcome by all the parties
to the coalition. The international conference, linking the Gulf with the Near East, was not
particularly appreciated in Washington and Tel Aviv. The French proposal for democratic
elections provoked resistance in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It was a compromise formula
intended to meet one condition which Iraq insisted on for its withdrawal: the replacement
of the Emir and the El-Sabah family from the Kuwaiti government. All the other
conditions presented officially by Saddam Hussein were less important. Cockburn and
Cohen, for instance, report an Iraqi backchannel proposal from 23 August, where neither
the link to Palestinians nor the US troop withdrawal was required. The New York Times
admits to having suppressed the news of this proposal, because unconditional withdrawal
from Iraq was the official policy line of the Bush administration.40
Following an opposite trajectory, Soviet diplomacy was moving from close collaboration to more independent diplomatic manoeuvres. This coincided largely with the shift in
the power balance between the line of close collaboration with the US pursued by
Shevardnadze, and the traditional pro-Arab, and particularly pro-Iraqi line still diffident
toward the US, as represented by Gorbachov’s special emissaire to the Middle East,
Yevgeni Primakov. Once again, Soviet interests changed slightly during the conflict. The
chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact, General Lobov, linked the US presence in the Gulf to
European arms-reduction talks and warned against US influence on the Soviet transcaucasian republics. Informations circulate that the Soviet passed intelligence and secretly
shipped arms to Iraq. Schewardnadse’s successor Bessmertnykh was asked at the
beginning of February 1991 to assure that Iraq could get Soviet arms.41 Thus, the USSR
took up where French diplomacy left off; it was voting in favour of all the resolutions,
yet promoting its plan of a Near-East Conference, linking the Gulf to the Near-East. This
was repeatedly refused by the US, for the first time at the meeting between Bush and
Gorbachov in Helsinki, beginning in September 1990. The USSR remained very sceptical
about the strong US military presence, yet could not avoid a military solution, because
Hussein was not in the least accommodating. In the last days before Desert Storm, the
USSR had improved its relations with Iran, which was the only country to really back
40
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, pp. 19-20. For a report of many
inofficial signs that Hussein wanted a compromise, see Arnold Hottinger, “Die Golf-Krise am Rande des
Krieges”.
41
Olga Alexandrova, “Der Golf-Konflikt in der sowjetischen Politik”, Außenpolitik, vol. 42, no. III (1991),
pp. 234-37.
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Soviet diplomacy — also with independent proposals.42 “The most important, and
perhaps the most unexpected, was Iran’s proposal for a large UN buffer force to patrol the
Iraq-Kuwait border (a contingency for which the UN had already drawn up detailed
plans).”43
The last Soviet diplomatic attempt in mid-February would have required an unconditional withdrawal of Iraq for the scratching of the UNSC resolutions against it, all
monitored by countries not directly involved under the aegis of the UNSC. Yet, the
declaration of the Iraqi Revolutionary Council at least officially attached some conditions
to an Iraqi retreat, more or less the same as on 12 August 1990: the retreat of Israel from
occupied territories, the “democratic” basis of the new Kuwaiti government (getting rid
of the Emir), the recognition of Iraq’s historical rights (the non-recognition of the KuwaitiIraqi border), and so on. Iraq’s move came too late and offered too little.
Even though after the massive air attack, some of the wider objectives of the coalition
could be guaranteed, the US government decided to torpedo the Soviet attempt. Bush put
an ultimatum independent of possible negotiated solutions. He declared that Iraq’s offer
was “nothing new”. The air-attack was not going to stop in order to allow the retreat. At
this point, diplomacy was a burden: President Bush wanted to get rid of the Iraqi threat.44
In other words, the US and the UK governments resisted the French and Soviet
initiatives. No conditions should be accepted. In the long run, such a position of a
repetitive US “no” would, however, have been unsustainable. In order to let off the
diplomatic steam of its coalition partners, thus, the US had to present diplomatic options
as well. In response to the French diplomatic offensive, Bush announced before the UN
on 1 October that the US aimed at a kind of general reshufflement of the major regional
problems, namely Iraq-Kuwait, Gulf-Iraq, Arab-Israeli. This was probably the last time
that such a link was mentioned before the outbreak of Desert Storm. Just after the decisive
vote on the use of “all necessary means”, James Baker made a second diplomatic
offensive starting at the end of November. Called “the extra mile for peace”, it consisted
in a proposal of a meeting of Baker and Hussein in Baghdad. Iraq accepted and released
the hostages, but the date (12 January) was finally refused by the US. This was seen as
a humiliation by Iraq.45
These diplomatic manoeuvres were difficult to reconcile with the intransigent position
of “aggression does not pay” and “this will not stand”. Those more inclined to punish
Saddam Hussein by force criticised it consequently for giving the latter an unwelcome
42
Aware of the US hegemony in the Gulf, Iran aligned overtly with the USSR during the conflict. See
Roland Lomme, “L’échec d’une stratégie soviétique”, Politique Étrangère, vol. 56, no. 2 (Été 1991), p. 436.
43
Barbara Rogers, “Wanted: A New Policy for the United Nations”, in Victoria Brittain (ed.) The Gulf
Between Us. The Gulf War and Beyond (London: Virago Press, 1991), p. 145.
44
For this analysis on the day after George Bush’s declaration, see Jan Krauze, “Attendre jusqu’au K.-O.”,
Le Monde, 17-18 février 1991, pp. 1, 5.
45
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, p. 20.
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Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
181
room of manoeuvre.46 Yet, in a “logic of power” view, it made sense because (1) the
negotiation rounds were necessary for the military build-up47; (2) the US had to win on
the domestic front, getting the Congress to vote for war. They were necessary side-shows
for an efficient translation of US power into influence over outcomes.
1.4. The domestic front: luring Congress and electoral cycles
Vietnam was lost at home. The Bush administration proved very skilful in circumventing
any Congressional debate and interference that would have hampered its flexibility to
manage the conflict — which meant at latest since late October to go to war. When finally
opposition organised, the agenda was well set.
The Baker strategy to multilateralise the conflict proved most important for the
management of Congressional opposition. Before the first Presidential speech, two
important UNSC resolution in which the Iraqi invasion was condemned had already been
passed. The Presidential decisions to send forces to Saudi Arabia and to enforce the
embargo via a blockade were taken before anyone else (except foreign allies) were asked.
This policy of faits accomplis was the leading thread of the administration’s strategy on
the domestic front.
Bush justified the decision to send troops without consulting Congress by pointing to
his position of supreme military commander. The Congress was going along, yet it
probably did not see a US offensive as a realistic option. Otherwise the blockade, an act
of war, would have required a vote.
This first period was characterised by two issues, (1) if there were vital interests at
stake in the Gulf which would justify an intervention and (2) if, as it was perceived in the
US, there was an international call for US intervention, there should also be an international payment for it. The administration was well aware that, with the budget
discussion in progress, any further financial weight would be judged unacceptable. The
pressing for burden-sharing became a necessary tool to get domestic agreement. Thus the
official line was, that troops were sent there for defensive purposes, and were paid for it
by others than the US.
The next step was to prepare Congress for war. Once the resolution which, in the
general reading, justified the use of armed force was passed at the end of November,
Baker, in preparation for war, made an “extra mile for peace”.48 This resolution turned
46
See, for instance, Geoffrey Kemp, “The Gulf Crisis: diplomacy or force?”, Survival, vol. XXXII, no.
6 (November-December 1990), p. 514.
47
Although this military build-up does not imply its use, but just the credibility of its threatening position,
the conflict dynamic makes it difficult for the US to retreat. Thus, the time-consuming diplomacy has been
analysed by many commentators as purely instrumental. See, for instance: Arnold Hottinger, “Die Golf-Krise
am Rande des Krieges”, pp. 1-2; and Lothar Rühl, “Der Krieg am Golf. Militärischer Verlauf und politischstrategische Probleme”, Europa Archiv, no. 8 (1991), p. 239.
48
We will see later, whether this diplomatic offensive was meant to avoid war or the “nightmare
scenario”.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
out to be a very powerful argument in the end, because the administration could point out
that the Congress could not prevent what the international community was asking for. The
general interest of the world was at stake, and here was Congress making petty arguments
about prerogatives.
Meanwhile, the administration tried to uphold the idea that Bush could go to war
without congressional consent. This was patently wrong, and the attempt spurred the first
major Congressional resistance. The war had to be approved by Congress and the
administration was finally forced to open the call for a vote. But again the agenda was set.
Having patiently waited for the mid-term elections, the administration had dispatched
another 200.000 NATO troops from Germany. With half a million soldiers and one ultimatum from end november, the administration has forced its own hand: any retreat from
war would be an indication that the US was bluffing and not keeping its promises. This
is a very interesting agenda-setting policy, often used to enhance credibility in threats and
to enforce commitment: it consists in consciously limiting one’s own options. The honour
of the US was at stake. The vote was very close, giving right to Saddam Hussein’s gamble
that the US would never do it.
But Vietnam did not only mean that domestic politics somewhat hampered the otherwise invincible US, it could also mean a catastrophic electoral defeat in the US. Yet, the
even worse danger was a “Carterisation” of the Bush administration, i.e. “a reputation for
inconsistency and appeasement, a foreign crisis that left the initiative to the adversary and
was a daily reminder of the limits of American power, and incessant and enfeebling
attacks from the right.”49 The 1990 midterm elections provided a foretaste of electoral
defeat. The Carter syndrome was haunting. Bush was criticised from the Republican Right
for his budget compromise, having lied on taxes. Neoconservative columnists asked
whether the president’s abandonment of his pledge on taxes was a foretaste of his
readiness to abandon his pledge of Kuwait.
2. Influencing the public opinion
For countries that are used to win wars and consider themselves major powers, to lose
represents a major shock. Thus, the Weimar Republic remained for its short existence
riddled with a collective memory of a “stab in the back”, fostered especially by the
military headquarters, the Nationalist movement of the DVP and later the Nazis. The First
World War was lost and yet it was fought nearly entirely outside German territory, the
frontline at the time of the armistice being far away from the German heartland. Thus,
many Germans were eager to accept a story of having been sold out by the politicians, the
press, the left — in short, all those that made up the core of the following Republic. The
war was lost at home.
49
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 130.
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Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
183
Something similar happened with regard to the Vietnam War in the US. Once again
the war was far away, and, so the story goes, the press and especially television was
endowed with the power to end wars at the domestic front, crippling the effort to win on
the battlefield. Following the “logic of power”, the US had to win. If it did not succeed
in Vietnam, it was a question of demoralisation that inhibited its power. It lacked the will.
Someone had to be blamed for it. The circle most discredited became the so-called liberal
(or East coast) foreign policy establishment, including the major press organs.
Several lessons were drawn from this experience for the management of the Gulf
conflict. It was a two stage process or two-front fight. On the one hand, domestic public
opinion had to be enmeshed in an idealist propaganda to overcome the resistance to
foreign intervention. The Vietnam Syndrome was to be overcome by mobilising the
collective memory of Second World War with anti-appeasement as a basic rationale and
anti-Hitlerism as a demagogic tool. On the other hand, the “information regime” was to
be strongly agenda-controlled so as to avoid negative news.
2.1. Crisis propaganda
Reminiscent of Weber’s definition of power, Philip M. Taylor defines “propaganda” as
simply a process of persuasion … Propaganda is one of the means by which the adherents of a particular cause seek to (sic!) engender such views in an audience which
would induce a desired perception of what is actually going on, and lead to them acting
in a desired way, involving amongst other methods the deliberate selection and omission
of accurate information.50
Taylor uses “propaganda” in a way that presupposes intentionality, but not necessarily
falsehood. In some of the following cases, the propagandists who try to mobilise collective
memories, symbols and connotations, might do it believing in the correctness of the
analogies. Their intentional use to attain a specific response is, however, enough to
classify this form of persuasion as a power exercise.
James Baker legitimated the quick and decisive US reaction with the argument that
in the Gulf, so central to world energy, oil and thus the “US way of life” was at stake.
The allusion was to the oil shocks of the 1970s. On 14 November, Baker spoke of Iraq
cutting the Western “economic lifeline.” He said that jobs were threatened. Although the
economic crisis would make this argument sound powerful, it did, however, fail to
mobilise necessary support. Thus, very quickly the collective memories to which policymakers alluded, shifted; the anti-totalitarian mobilisation for the Second World War (and
the Cold War) was reactivated. It might have been the first conflict of the after-Cold War;
it undoubtedly used the symbolic capital of the Cold War. Saddam Hussein, as Ayatollah
Khomeiny before him, became a Middle Eastern counterpart to Adolf Hitler.
50
Philip M. Taylor, The War and the Media. Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War (Manchester,
New York: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 18-19.
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It was a specific item of the Second World War memory which assured finally that
the public (and eventually also the US Congress) legitimated US intervention of a larger
kind. In mid-November, a major New York Times poll indicated that 54% of respondents
thought one reason to be good enough to resist Iraq’s invasion: to preempt Iraq from becoming a nuclear power. This argument, used from the very beginning of the crisis by
pro-Israeli commentators, as for instance William Safire and A.M. Rosenthal51, was
diligently inserted in Bush’s speeches. On Thanksgiving Day, Bush visited the troops in
Saudi Arabia. There, alluding to Iraqi’s nuclear potential, he stated that Saddam Hussein
“has never possessed a weapon he hasn’t used.”52 The argument resounded strongly, and
understandably so. It had mobilised the US legitimation for the nuclear program during
the Second World War. Now it justified a rapid reaction to preempt Saddam Hussein,
although the argument was for a long time neglected when democratic politics and Human
Rights were not much better served.53 In the Gulf, the US was fighting the Second World
War to win Vietnam.
In an attempt to mobilise especially the Arab public, Saddam Hussein had to mount
an impressive propaganda battle of his own during the crisis leading up to Desert Storm.
After all, it had to be forgotten that he had won the First Gulf war with the visible help
of the US. The conspiracy theory the Iraqi government constructed was publicised by
Saddam Hussein on 1 April 1990: Iranians were used by the West and pushed into the
war, where the West then helped Iraq.54 Hence both appeared as victims. This was
important to avoid a conspiracy theory of the kind that since the Iraq resistance helped
(and was helped by) the West, Iraq was a Western imperialist puppet. As Jean Leca
rightly notes, there is a reasonable kernel of truth to this argument insofar as the West was
interested both in stopping Iranian expansionism and avoiding Iraqi hegemony. It
encouraged a war “without winners, or losers.”55
The Second Gulf War was even more difficult to sell. Iraq attacked a fellow Arab
country. The direct US intervention provided it with the possibility of deflecting Arab
disarray towards the US and indirectly to those who sustained the coalition. Iraq appealed
to Arab collective memory by making analogies to the crusaders and to colonialism.
Saddam Hussein could make use of existing conspiracy theories, where the West is seen
as applying a divide et impera policy. Iraq thereby appeared in the tradition of Arab
51
A few days after the decision to deploy forces in the Gulf, these US columnists were asking for “at
least” the destruction of Iraqi’s weaponry of mass destruction. See Andreas Rieck, “Der Golfkrieg als
Schlüsselereignis für den arabisch-israelischen Konflikt”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. B 7-8/91 (8
February 1991), p. 43.
52
Steve Niva, “The Battle is Joined”, p. 64.
53
Ghassam Salamé, “Les enjeux d’une crise”, p. 12.
54
“Discours de Saddam Hussein aux membres du Commandement général des Forces armées”, du 1er
avril 1990, Document in Maghreb-Machrek, no. 130 (octobre-décembre 1990), p. 49.
55
Jean Leca, “Aux origines de la crise: le discours des acteurs”, Maghreb-Machrek, no. 130 (octobredécembre 1990), p. 46.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
185
leaders facing the West and defending Arab dignity. In this perspective, he could also use
religious motives such as the presence of non-believers in Saudi Arabia, and eventually,
call for a jihad, which would legitimate military action also against other Arab countries
to the extent that they made common cause with the West. The use of the distributional
argument for the one and indivisible Arab nation could thus be applied as a legitimation
of the invasion.
The major propaganda issue during the conflict was the attempt to link the Gulf to
the Palestinian problem (for double standards) for activating anti-imperialism via antizionism, and transposing the image of Israel being a Western “lackey” (or Trojan Horse)
to the Arab coalition partner. This cancelled the effect of the Arab condemnation of his
occupation as “un-islamic”. The latter was completely forgotten after 15 days.56
2.2. War-news management
Vietnam is the main reference for a double media war. The first aspect of this war is that
the Bush administration wanted to avoid a rising resistance at home and abroad that would
be fostered by pictures of war cruelties. This meant a control of the news in order to produce the “clean” war of “surgical strikes”. The second aspect has been alluded to before.
News become a psychological weapon. It is not only a burden of US policy to be
contained, but a coercive medium to be exploited.
Thus, the direct use of the media-management for the enhancing of power consists in
the control of media resources for the power holder’s purposes, in other words,
straightforward propaganda. This form of direct power exercise does not need much introduction. It has been extensively used by all the major actors in the war, with the US, as
already seen, leading during “Desert Shield” and Iraq, faute de mieux, during “Desert
Storm”.
The best known example from the side of the coalition is the dying, oil-smeared
crested cormorant, the supposedly innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s environmental
warfare. As it appeared rapidly, the images were taken at another place at another time.57
As is frequently the case with propaganda, it works because it is based on “half-truths”.
There was indeed a (smaller) Iraqi-provoked oil spill and Saddam Hussein was later to
prove not innocent of environmental warfare when he set Kuwait’s oil fields on fire.
When the disinformation was revealed, the media coverage was much less intense.
Iraq sought for very long to hide the Iraqi civil casualties so as to avoid national
demoralisation. Only later, from the 11 February onwards, did the Iraqi government try
to use images of dead women and children to show the coalition to be “coward”
murderers of innocents. When the shelter or bunker in Amiriya, a relatively well-off
district of Baghdad, was attacked on 13 February, the Iraq succeeded in creating the
56
57
Ursula Braun, “Epizentrum Kuwait”, p. 61.
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, pp. 80-82.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
impression that the coalition’s “smart” weapons were used deliberately against civil
targets. Since the coalition was pushed on the defensive, anxious of the Arab coalition
partners’ reaction, this has been judged a propaganda victory for Iraq.58
Let us, however, rather concentrate on the second strategy of media-management,
besides propaganda. It is a form of news containment exercised mainly via the establishment of obligatory passage points, that is, it is a form of indirect power through agendasetting. News containment followed a set of tactics. In order to control public opinion, the
Bush administration tried and largely succeeded in containing the production and
distribution of news both within the US, and in the Gulf.
With regard to the isolation of anti-war journalists at home, a politics of intimidation
was pursued by administration agencies. As the report of the Fund for Free Expression
states,
There have been several instances of retaliation against journalists who have questioned
the propriety of the war. After he wrote approvingly of an antiwar march, San Francisco
Examiner associate editor and columnist Warren Hinckle was put on a partially paid
three-month leave … The editor of the Kutztown, Pennsylvania Patriot was fired after
he wrote an editorial calling for peace. Village Voice national affairs editor Dan Bischoff
was cancelled as a guest on the CBS news “Nightwatch” program. The Pentagon refused
to provide anyone to appear on the program if the Voice was to be represented among
the participants. The program’s producer recalls a Pentagon representative as objecting
on the grounds that “if someone from The Village Voice is on, that raises the possibility
that there will be a discussion on the merits” of the lawsuit filed by the Voice and other
media organizations challenging the Pentagon press restrictions. The Public Broadcasting
System postponed a rebroadcast of a Bill Moyers “Frontline” program on the IranContra affair, because, according to an internal PBS memo, the program’s raising of
“serious questions about then-Vice President Bush’s involvement and actions” make it
“journalistically inappropriate” during the war against Iraq, because the program could
be viewed as overtly political by attempting to undermine the President’s credibility.59
At the front, the strategy was relatively sophisticated. In this respect, the battle on the
information front drew on the lessons from a series of wars, including Vietnam.60 The
Reagan administration was very impressed by the media management of the British during
the Falkland (Malvinas) War in 1982. The British Marine took 27 journalists with them,.
They were allowed to dispatch their reports via the marine broadcasting - after careful
“clearing”. TV reports were not even allowed. The media management during the Grenada
invasion in 1983 was modelled accordingly. For the first two days of the invasion, the US
58
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 222.
Quoted in Grace Paley, “Something about the Peace Movement. Something about the People’s Right
Not to Know”, in Victoria Brittain (ed.) The Gulf Between Us. The Gulf War and Beyond (London: Virago
Press, 1991), pp. 72-73.
60
For the following, see in particular: Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, Kuno Kruse & Birgit Schwarz,
“Zensoren, Voyeure, Reporter des Sieges. Im Golfkrieg triumphiert die Propaganda”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no.
6 (1-6 February 1991), p. 16.
59
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Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
187
public saw only Cuban uniforms and weaponry — Pentagon material designed to show
the advance of international communism. 300 reporters were sitting in Barbados. Any
attempt to come close to Grenada was, also militarily, avoided. The major networks
protested, and the administration changed the logbook. The Panama invasion in 1989 was
to become the precursor of the Gulf war. Selected reporters were pooled and flown in to
Panama, their news gathering from the operation “Just Cause” delayed and then cleared.
Thus, the US tried to make a compromise between Falkland and Vietnam, via the lessons
of Grenada and Panama.61
The result was an elaboration of the newspool-system that the UK used during the
Second World War. The idea is to select a number of journalists from all the media
branches, to attach them to the troops, to let them rotate, and to pool their news for all the
journalists present in Saudi Arabia. The system was build around three bases in Saudi
Arabia: the Joint Information Bureau (JIB) in Dhahran, the arrangements for daily press
briefings in Riyadh, and the pools attached to the armed forces at the front. Since for the
1500 - 2000 journalists who had arrived in the region, there were about 200 places in the
pools, the bulk of reporters was dependent on the Riyadh daily briefings organised for
them in the Hyatt Hotel by the US, British and Saudi Arabian military authorities62, and
on the “Jiblers” in Dharan, who often had the last say.
The control of the information flow was organised at two neuralgic points. To control
the sourcing of information, only an indirect system could be trusted; for the transmission
this and direct censorship was applied. The system worked relatively well — for the
military.
The “containment” of the information-gathering was multi-layered. First, there were
no pool places for journalists from other countries than the UK, the US and France.63
This indirectly controls the news by inducing the production of information the warfighting countries’ opinion — and not the neutral ones — are most interested in. It
provided largely a Anglo-American view. Second, the pool-journalists attached to land
troops have obvious troubles with covering a war which was fought largely in the air and
by night. In that respect, the news became dependent on static TV pictures (“fireworks”)
made by some big networks in the large cities (Baghdad, but not the much more damaged
Basra) and in particular on the prepared tapes delivered by the military.64
Once the news-production was contained at its source, different neuralgic points of
its distribution was checked by the military. Pool-journalists to US troops were not
allowed to use portable satellite dishes for direct transmission (and thus sometimes used
the British ones). All the written news were checked by information officers at the level
of the troops (field-censorship), the tapes at the level of the pool. They were dependent
61
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 36.
The French had an independent briefing in a hotel next door.
63
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 52.
64
In order to have impressive tapes at hand, US military equipped some of the “smart” weapons, as the
GBU-15 bomb, with cameras that showed how bombs reached their targets also via roofs.
62
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on the military for being dispatched to the pool in Dhahran and then again dependent on
the speed of the “Jiblers” to make it available for all. Censorship was also used to prevent
soldiers from expressing their opinions, once again because of the negative memory of
such statements during the Vietnam War.65 Besides the usual intimidation, journalists
were sometimes ordered to leave the pool, as was for instance Douglas Jehl from the Los
Angeles Times.66
Yet, this system would not have worked if the media management had not provided
some pieces for the journalists to bite into. General Schwarzkopf said at the time of the
Panama war in 1990: “Listen, I ain’t no dummy when it comes to dealing with the press.
And I fully understand that when you try to stonewall the press, and don’t give them
anything to do, then before long the press turns ugly …”67
Accordingly, the journalists got something to do.68 In addition to the prepared
briefings and military videos, the Joint Information Bureau organised an “entertainment”
program for the journalists, as, for instance, the repeated organisation of trips to see the
troops. “Hollywood” Mike Sherman was assigned responsible for the program. He directed
the JIB between August and December 1990. Based usually in West Los Angeles, Marine
Captain Sherman was normally linking-officer to the film industry.69 The troops were
informed beforehand, the visits “contained”, the news content scarce.
This whole media management based on spectacular military videos of the air attack,
on the selection and intimidation of journalists, the symbiosis of troops and journalists,
the dependence on military news distribution, the censorship; all this together produced
a system that gives the military a virtual total control over the flow of information.
Consequently, the journalist’s reaction to their own work was riddled with frustration.
More and more “unilaterals” working independently of the pool system tried to escape
control. Yet, modern warfare made it impossible to assemble a complete picture out of the
bits and pieces of news which they were able to find. Consciousness of powerlessness did
not help. The information flowed relatively unaffected.
65
John R. MacArthur, “Operation Wüstenmaulkorb”, Die Zeit, vol. 48, no. 9 (26 February - 4 March
1993), p. 44.
66
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 53. Of course did other states also apply heavy censorship.
So did Israel cut the satellite link of NBC following an account of casualties after a Scud attack on Tel Aviv
judged premature. By the end of January, Israel tightened the control. The Newsweek’s bureau head Theodore
Stanger got his press card revoked and the domestic phone calls of foreign correspondents were monitored.
Iraq did its best, too, and in much more direct ways. The own news system in centrally controlled, all Western
journalists were ordered to leave by the end of the first weekend after the air attack, except a CNN team and
Alfonso Rojo from Spain’s El Mundo, whose reports were all censored. The aim was more straightforward
propaganda. See ibid., pp. 70, 101, 102.
67
As quoted in Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 41.
68
The same reasoning applies to Iraq’s reconsideration of its decision to kick out Western journalists.
Their reacceptance and the establishment of a privileged channel of media transmission via CNN show that
the best way to capture the political imaginaire is not to stop, but to direct the flow of news.
69
John R. MacArthur, “Operation Wüstenmaulkorb”, p. 44.
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The first commentators were sometimes heavily criticised for their uncontrolled news
coverage. How was it possible that the German ARD70 correspondent in Washington
knew that the US was definitely hitting the right targets and destroyed them? He knew it
from CNN. And “CNN knew it from the Pentagon, and what the Pentagon really knew,
only the Pentagon knows… The Pentagon succeeded in a surprise attack on the public.
The tension built up during weeks exploded in a liberating strike. All, so the journalists
trumpeted to the world, was working as planned. Boom, boom, boom.”71 Media coverage
was couched in military terms. And indeed, this media “surprise attack” was strategically
planned, and part and parcel of US warfare.
After a first inebriety of the massive bombardment of Baghdad, the lightened sky and
the satisfaction of seeing the yearned-for attack happen, the high mood gave way to a
“hangover”. At least some journalists and commentators tried to recollect what they really
saw. The bizarre mixture of first hand and real time images, i.e. the impression of close
presence, and of a complete passivity with regard to the unfolding events, created an
impression of artificiality, of a virtual war. Journalists were sitting in their hotels or in
their studios exposed to a flow of information which the constraint of TV-immediacy left
them with the mere function of transmitting. News were not made by them, but through
them.
3. From the “Rapid Deployment Force” to “Desert Storm”
Once the politicians did their work and kept the generals free from unwelcome intrusal,
the final story of “Desert Storm” becomes a perfect application of US military power,
integrating the alleged lessons of the Vietnam war.
3.1. A Strategy of Counterinsurgency
The history of “Desert Storm” started in 1977.72 The US National Security Advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski was redrawing US strategy in every region in the world. Ten
different military commands would eventually cover the whole globe. In August 1977,
Presidential Directive 8 inaugurated a new approach of US presence in the Middle East.
Brzezinski was especially worried about the absence of any structure for the Persian Gulf.
Yet, instead of a new command, in 1979 the Pentagon decided to create a “Rapid
70
“Allgemeine Rundfunkanstalten Deutschlands”, the public Channel 1 in Germany.
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, Kuno Kruse & Birgit Schwarz, “Zensoren, Voyeure, Reporter des Sieges.
Im Golfkrieg triumphiert die Propaganda”, p. 15, my translation.
72
For the following, see U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, pp. 43-47; and especially
Sheily Ryan, “Countdown for a Decade”, in Phyllis Bennis & Michel Moushabeck (eds) Beyond the Storm.
A Gulf Crisis Reader (New York: Oliver Branch Press, 1991), pp. 91-102. Sir John Hackett notes that already
the Kennedy administration had planned a ”fire brigade” to be deployed with special transport aircrafts and
Fast Deployment Logistics (FDL) ships. The plan fall in disregard with Vietnam, but was resurrected by the
Carter administration. Sir John Hackett, “Protecting Oil Supplies: The Military Requirements”, in Christoph
Bertram (ed.) Third World Conflict and International Security (London: Macmillan/IISS, 1982), p. 50.
71
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Deployment Joint Task Force” that immediately concentrated on Middle Eastern
contingencies. President Carter’s State of the Union address of 23 January 1980 was
officially aiming against a Soviet threat (after the invasion of Afghanistan). In a comment
on Carter’s declaration, the Secretary of Defence Harold Brown claimed that the major
threat was not Soviet, but “regional turbulence”. Thus, increasingly the interest turned
toward regional hegemons, as for instance Iran and Iraq. Between 23 August 1981 and 3
January 1983, the Rapid Deployment Force was turned into a regular unified command
structure, the “Central Command” or CentCom.
The strategic reorientation implied that rapid reaction forces would be used not only
to respond to attacks on vital US interests, but to deter them. Sir John Hackett noted in
1982 that
in December 1979, Brzezinski referred, in a little noticed address to the Chicago
Economic Club, to the desirability of being able to respond “quickly, effectively and
even pre-emptively” (my emphasis).73
Consequently, the strategy consisted in preparing “facilities” (bases) to be fully usable in
cases of crises or conflicts, to expand the navy forces in the region and in a programme
of “prepositioning” of material required in times of a massive troop deployment in the
region. The ability to deploy forces massively and rapidly should serve as a deterrent to,
and thereby preempt, attacks. Saudi Arabia became the centrepiece of this strategy.
Fuelled by the oil windfalls, the Saudi’s budget could finance a spectacular military buildup — which was from the beginning designed to allow the US to come to the Saudis’
defence. Therefore, not weapon systems, but military construction and infrastructure took
the lion’s share of the US equipment sold to Saudi Arabia since 1950, 85% out of $US
50 billion. The $US 8.5 billion AWACS deal in 1982 was conceived in such a way as to
direct Saudi defence not against Israel, but against Yemen, Iran and Iraq, and created the
potential to host a deployment of US aircraft in emergency situations.
After the end of the Iran-Iraq war in mid-1988, Iraq quickly turned out to be a major
regional threat to US interests. The threat was acknowledged, when the strategic planners
of the US Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy focused on Middle Intensity
Conflicts, i.e. conflicts with regional middle powers, in particular those with ABC weapon
systems. Secret planning was targeting Iraq and Syria.74 Between 2 and 7 October 1989,
General Schwarzkopf made a tour in Saudi Arabia and confirmed that a Iraqi invasion was
“probable”.75 Back in the US, plans for defence were made. In January 1990, General
Schwarzkopf had ordered a computerised command post exercise (CPX) to explore
73
Sir John Hackett, “Protecting Oil Supplies: The Military Requirements”, p. 42.
Michael T. Klare, “Proche-Orient, une guerre de cent ans”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 37, no. 432
(Mars 1990).
75
Chapour Haghibat, “Les dessous de la guerre du Golfe”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 39, no. 457
(April 1992), p. 14.
74
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Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome
191
responses to an Iraqi invasion of the Arabian peninsula. It was called “Internal Look”.76
This computer plan became the first operational base for strategic planning immediately
after Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait.
3.2. US strategy from Desert Shield to Desert Storm
Once relieved of the political manoeuvres at home or in the coalition that were allegedly
responsible for the bad results of US intervention in Vietnam77, and once internationally
legitimated, military strategies could work more autonomously of the direct control which
characterised Johnson’s command. Many of the Vietnam “lessons” had been learned.
The attack would be massive and not a gradually escalated one, as was the tit-for-tat
incrementation of the Vietnam war. “The preferred American response to an Iraqi attack
would be the antithesis of US operations in Vietnam. The ensuing war would involve the
maximum use of force in the earliest hours of the fighting.”78 In a similar vein, military
objectives were clearly set. It was, to use Marine Corps Major General Robert Johnson’s
words, like “real estate somewhere down the road”, not the enmeshed objectives of a civil
war in the Asian jungle. The goal was first of all the seizure of territory, the liberation of
Kuwait. In order to assure victory on the battle ground, the attack was not limited to the
front, but was brought to the “heart” of Iraqi forces. This reflected the strategic shift that
happened already at the end of the Vietnam war. Indeed, the very destruction of the
enemy’s forces could be pursued as a kind of collateral gain or, as some suggest, as a new
and wider war aim.79
Finally, the most important lesson from Vietnam was supposedly that the entire
strategy should be arranged to minimise the loss of (coalition) human lives — as if
military commanders were not doing this anyway. A TV war showing body bags had to
be avoided. As some commentators rightly point out, however, wars and “casualties” at
least initially can also tend to mobilise public opinion behind its forces.80
The US-led attack followed in four steps. First, US troops were flown in, accompanied by aircrafts and some war ships to deter possible attacks against Saudi Arabia: the
“minimum deterrence force”. Then, in a second phase 220 000 troops were brought in.
This took three month. Then, Desert Storm started with a massive air attack aimed at
providing air superiority and finally supremacy, in order to prepare the ground war.
76
U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, p. 29. Chapour Haghibat, “Les dessous de la
guerre du Golfe”, p. 14, cites a Colonel Tony Gain from the Central Command for confirmation that real
manoeuvres took place, called “Internal Look 90” during July 1990 in Florida.
77
For such an argument, see Lothar Rühl, “Der Krieg am Golf. Militärischer Verlauf und politischstrategische Probleme”, Europa Archiv, no. 8 (1991), p. 241.
78
For this quote before the attack, see Geoffrey Kemp, “The Gulf Crisis: diplomacy or force?”, p. 511.
79
Eugene J. Caroll, Jr and Gene R. La Rocque, “Victory in the Desert: Superior Technology or Brute
Force?” in Victoria Brittain (ed.) The Gulf Between Us. The Gulf War and Beyond (London: Virago Press,
1991), p. 45.
80
This certainly happened for the Gulf conflict. See Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, “How Kuwait
Was Won. Strategy in the Gulf War”, International Security, vol. 16, no. 2 (Fall 1991), p. 17.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
The military story is undoubtedly a success story. The US tried out the emergency
plans prepared in CentCom for quick deployment and those developed for the AirLand
Battle at the European NATO front. It was the biggest and most complicated logistic
operation since the beginning phase of the Korean War 1950-51. According to different
sources, this included moving 1.5 to 2 billion tons of military material, ammunition and
equipment; 12 000 tanks and armoured vehicles; 67-103 000 wheeled vehicles; 26 000
containers; as well as 55 million ton of mail and 117 million bottles of drinking water.
To do this, the US used 40 ports, the entire air transport fleet, more than 1000 ships, and
bases in America, Asia, Europe and in Egypt. They profited from (1) the existing Saudi
infrastructure which has facilities for 2500 military airplanes, and (2) the NATO structures
in Europe, that is airports, deposits, ports, ships, and so on. In Germany, it used 750 trains
of the German merchandise train system and 1200 transports on German roads.81 NATO
proved a key link for the early deployment of forces and the deployment of its VII Corps
from Germany was Schwarzkopf’s condition for any offensive option, because they were
the elite troops trained in AirLand Battle.82 Once again, the end of bipolar competition
in Europe made things easier for the coalition. It could use troops that otherwise would
have been needed to protect the European front.
Table 9.4 The composition of US forces in the area (by 16 January 1991)
Air force: 40.000; Fixed-wing aircraft min. 850. Total of fixed-wing aircraft from all services min.
1.680.
Navy: 70.000; ships 114, navy planes 530 (410 combat planes)
Army: Personnel 245.000 (approx. 70.000 of which came from Europe), main battle tanks 2.100.
Marine Corps: Personnel 100.000, Tanks 200.
Non-US coalition forces added about another 200.000 military personnel, primarily ground forces.
It was a massive air attack with 109.876 sorties, averaging 2000 per day (all types of
aircraft, including transport and fuel) and 88.500 tons of bombs. This air attack followed
closely the “Airland Battle” strategy, developed for the European theatre, which consists
in targeting behind the front to disorganise the defense, break the organisation of counterattacks and the link to follow-on echelons (FoFa, “Follow-on Forces Attack”), and to
demobilise psychologically. Thus, the attacks were targeting first the command,
communication and intelligence capacities in the heart of Iraq, then the logistic structures
that link up to the front and finally, in order to prepare the ground war, the armed forces
81
If not otherwise started, the following is taken from Lothar Rühl, “Der Krieg am Golf. Militärischer
Verlauf und politisch-strategische Probleme”, Europa Archiv, no. 8 (1991), p. 239.
82
For the centrality of NATO and its troops, see U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory,
pp. 145-46 and Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, p. 192.
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193
in Kuwait. Although the attack was generally expected to come via Iraq to avoid the Iraqi
defence lines83, it seems to have caught Iraqi unprepared.
By 20 February, shortly before the beginning of the attack, more than 530.000 US
forces were ready. After this preparation, the land war became in effect a “walkover”.
4. Conclusion: The Gulf conflict — unnecessary and inevitable84
How does this dynamic part link up with the power origins developed in the previous
chapter? The logic of power, at both the regional and international level, could be
constructed so as to expect an Iraqi US contest to fill the regional vacuum of power. The
distribution of power would lead to a prediction of US victory under a variety of conditions: capacity to get a local base, multilateral backing, coalition financing, and so on.
In a sense, the story spells out ex post all the conditions needed to translate the expected
power potential difference into actual influence over the outcome.
By focusing on the dynamics of the war, power analysis produces the most fruitful
puzzles for understanding the conflict. By giving the most rational means-ends relations,
it constructs the most rational behaviour of the actors and compares them with the actual
behaviour. The discrepancies are the power puzzles of the translation dynamics. They can
happen at the very beginning by miscalculating either resources or will to use them (the
failed deterrence scenario). Here interests and preferences are integrated into power
analysis because they qualify the will to resort to all the power resources. Later,
discrepancies can appear when pre-established strategies fail or are poorly implemented.
Thus, at this point, a strategic discussion would normally have shown all the different
interactions and judgments that brought about the Kuwaiti invasion, Desert Shield and
Desert Storm. This will be done in Part V, in chapter 14, when the disposition of the
Realist paradigm to produce research puzzles and over-rationalisation is analysed as an
incident of governance.
But to give the judgment in advance; it seems that the conflict started unnecessarily
because one could have avoided weapon proliferation, deterred Iraqi intervention and
pushed Gulf states to pursue more enlightened policy. The Iraqi miscalculation of taking
all Kuwait without expecting massive US response, and the Kuwaiti miscalculation of
escalading the oil price conflict without expecting Iraqi annexation, can, in this rationalist
power analysis, only be understood via the ambiguous signals given by the US
administration. It seems that the administration did not want to get involved and hoped
for a limited conflict which would be resolved regionally. A mixture of strong
83
For examples of a concise analysis that predicted the land war strategy, see Jacques Isnard, “Comme
dans les manuels”, Le Monde, 17-18 février 1991, pp. 1, 3; and Christoph Bertram, “Statt Schlichtung nun
die Schlacht?”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 9 (22-28 February 1991), pp. 7-8.
84
Christoph Bertram, “Ein Krieg ohne Beispiel. Der Waffengang um Kuwait was unnötig und
unvermeidlich”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 10 (1-7 March 1991), p. 3.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
commitment to defend Kuwait and an attempt to address the financing of Iraqi’s debt
might have prevented the invasion.85
If one translates this conflict in game-theoretical terms, the game matrix for both Iraq
and Kuwait before the invasion must have been one where both considered escalation as
being in their interest. Normally these things happen when the power differential is not
very large and miscalculations most probable. Yet in this case it is exactly the different
anticipation of power differentials (with or without the US) that in fact provided a form
of a twofold game which cannot be put into one single matrix.
Once the US took over the Kuwaiti part, its matrix was one where peaceful conflict
resolution had to be avoided, whereas Iraq got trapped in a no-win situation: either
humiliation or war. From this point war appears nearly inevitable. The game must therefore be considered as a variant of the “Rambo-game” type: the US could make its best
result by avoiding compromise (Rambo), whereas Iraq had to give in, i.e. accept war and
its defeat, in order to avoid humiliation and domestic unrest.86 In this respect, the US set
the stage for making war inevitable, but would not have succeeded without the domestic
constraints on the Iraqi government.
The escalation could not have been done without the consent of the coalition for
which an international support and legitimation was needed. Thus, despite all claims to
the contrary, the policy mix of a needed multilateralisation and a needed escalation, let
the Bush administration follow a typical gradualist timetable87: it started with a UNSC
verbal condemnation, then the economic embargo, then the naval blockade, air blockade,
finally the threat of direct military action, followed by the attack. Even the US military
operations proceded in different stages leaving the ground war to the very end. At all
stages, negotiation offers were presented to allow the interruption of the escalation.
Security analysis does not stop here. It is important to know the long-term effects of
this outcome. Common political wisdom has it, that one can win a war and lose the peace.
In power terms this refers in particular to indirect power, that is, the attempt to frame an
outcome, not as an end, but as a means to change the regimes within which future
conflicts will be played out. The translation dynamics have a long-term effect on the
power structure to frame, preempt, or set the agenda for future conflicts. In the Gulf, the
US fought Second World War to win Vietnam. Or: In the post-Cold War world, it wanted
to preempt power challengers North and South to deflect domestic restructuring. What has
the war changed in world power politics?
85
Janice Gross Stein, “Deterrence and Compellence in the Gulf”, p. 159. She then argues that the US was
actually unable to make a credible deterrent threat.
86
For a presentation of the Rambo-game in IR, see Michael Zürn, Interessen und Institutionen in der
internationalen Politik, pp. 209ff.
87
For this paragraph, see Lawrence Freedman & Efraim Karsh, “How Kuwait was won”, p. 40.
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
10
“War and Change” in the
Middle Eastern Security Complex
Wars that end with such a crushing victory are the fathers of all new equilibria. They reflect a power shift that happened before the conflict, that sought to realise itself during the
conflict and provided the “defining moment” (Baker) for the “new world order”.
This chapter will assess the feedback of the conflict’s outcome on the crucial points
of the Neorealist power analysis (see Figure 10.1):
(1) on the most abstract level: the historically contingent fields of security. The question
to be tackled is, if the conflict has opened new or made visible the importance of already
existing security sectors. This influences the respective sets of potential power resources.
(2) on the level of historically contingent power resources. The feedback dynamic part of
Neorealist power analysis must evaluate if the conflict has shown or provided a reassessment of the value of power resources, for instance, if there has been an unknown resource
that proved important or a traditionally respected power resource that has proven useless.
(3) on the level of the security complex. Once the future power resources provide the
primary material for the assessment of the balance of power, the conflict-outcome will be
judged on its impact on the entire security complex. For our case, this implies the impact
on the international and regional balances of power, their interpenetration, the security
policies of the major powers, and the rules which govern the different regimes. It is on
this level, that the Neorealist concept of indirect power can be located. It can be defined
as the attempt of an actor to influence the future security structure via the feedback of the
outcome. Foreign policy moves can be seen as part of wider long-term strategics.
1. A new kind of war for a new kind of security?
The first feedback dynamic concentrates on the reassessment of resources or policy
instruments and their relationship to potential power. Theoretically, the analysis of a
conflict can point to formerly neglected or even unknown issue areas or regimes (or
195
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Figure 10.1 Power effects
security sectors) that are defined around resources whose control has become significant
in the distribution of power. This happened, for instance, to the environmental sector. But
these feedbacks are rare and major historical changes might take so much time as not to
be linkable to one particular event. Feedback analysis also shows how specific resources
in already existing regimes have acquired a new importance. This can be shown for two
resources and instruments in the conflict, namely water and space-transmitted and spacecollected information.1
1
Therefore, strictly speaking, these first two issues could be already mentioned during the initial stage
of the analysis. The decision to leave them here is the fact that they were less widely perceived as major
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War and Change in the Middle Eastern Security Complex
197
1.1. Future Middle Eastern “Water wars” ?
During the Gulf conflict, helpless cormorants in a horror movie of oily sea waves brought
one often forgotten security item, namely the environment, to the forefront of international
attention. Analytically, environmental security is not an easily approached subject. Buzan
has attempted a definition: “environmental security concerns the maintenance of the local
and planetary biosphere as the essential support system on which all other human
enterprises depend”. This leaves some questions unanswered. The difficulty consists in
knowing whose security we are talking about. Generally, one could reasonably see the
state level as the security-relevant unit.2 But for the environment, at least as it is
expressed in the definition, the reference seems to be global, both supranational, because
the environment does not stop at borders, and individual, because it is a basis for all other
“human enterprises.”
In general, the state reference is kept. Environmental security becomes, then, a hybrid
between economic and military security. It is similar to economic security, because very
often the control of, for instance, water, can be considered like a natural resource.3 It can
be done via territorial control of the exploitation sites or via the control of its distribution
(cartelised markets). It is similar to military security, because “drying out” the enemy hurts
and kills the individual and not the community as such.
Water is the one environmental resource in the Middle Eastern security complex that,
for some commentators, will be a possible trigger for major future conflicts. “Water
security will soon rank with military security in the war rooms of defense ministries.”4
We are entering a century where security will also mean “hydrostrategics.”5
To say that water was no reason for this conflict, does not mean that the water-issue
has not triggered armed conflicts in the past. The most disputed area is the Upper part of
the Jordan, or in other words, the water divide between Syria, Jordan and Israel. Most
recently, the Jordan Wahda (unity) Dam project has been torpedoed by Israelis, because
they want a part of it.
This is an old dispute. Following a US-sponsored decision from 1955, Jordan is
allowed to take 377 million m3 of the Yarmuk for its East-Ghor Channel (a channel which
takes water from the Yarmuk and carries it in parallel to the Jordan for irrigation), Syria
90 million m3, and Israel (at the time only for 10 km riverain of the Yarmuk) 25 million
m3. Yet neither Israel nor Syria follows this so called “Johnston-Plan”, never signed, but
power instruments for such a war, i.e. that the awareness was raised during the conflict. Suffice it to mention
that the water issue has known a particular success after the war, not only because it became one of the
working groups of the Middle East (Madrid) Conference.
2
See also Ole Wæver, Securitization and Desecuritization.
3
Peter H. Gleick, “Water and Conflict: Fresh Water Resources and International Security”, International
Security, vol. 18, no. 1 (Summer 1993), p. 84.
4
Joyce R. Starr, “Water Wars”, Foreign Policy, no. 82 (Spring 1991), p. 19.
5
Reiner Luyken, “Wasser ist Frieden. Kein Wasser ist Krieg”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 52 (20-26 December
1991), p. 13.
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always referred to as the only authoritative source. Israel pumps 30% of its water supply
via the “water-carrier” out of the Sea of Galilee. The same water-carrier takes 500 million
m3 of Jordan water, instead of the 375 fixed by the Johnston Plan. It pumps the Jordan
back into the See of Galilee (Tiberia).
The Arabs tried in 1964 to channel the Lebanese Hasbani and the Syrian Banias (two
of the Jordan sources) around the Golan into the Yarmuk and to dam it before it reaches
Israel.6 Repeatedly in 1966 and 1967, Israel bombarded vehicles, roads and the
construction site. With the war from 1967, it got hold of the Banias, and controls half the
Yarmuk. Since then Israel also controls the Northern entrance of the East-Ghor Channel.
On 23 June and the 10 August 1969, Israel destroyed a great part of the Channel and
avoided its maintenance at the entrance till 1976. Today, between Hamar Gadar on the
Yarmuk and its mouth, Israel has three water pumps, one for the grapefruit and bananas
plantations and two for the See of Galilee — depleted by its own water carrier. Yet, Israel
is using a highly inefficient irrigation system (sprinkling), unlike Jordan which needs only
half the water (drip irrigation). Also Syria pumps out of the higher part of the Yarmuk.
For these reasons, Jordan and Syria have developed a plan to construct a new dam on the
Yarmuk, the “dam of unity”. Jordan pays for the dam, gets 75% of the water, and Syria
75% of the electric power. They offered Israel the share provided by the Johnson Plan.
Israel refused and succeeded in stopping the World Bank financing which would help
Jordan to build the dam.7 The loser in the game is Jordan.
The biggest problem appears with the entrance of a new sovereign state, Palestine.
The West Bank has become crucial for the entire water equilibrium of Israel. Around 33%
of Israel’s total sustainable annual water yields originates in the territories occupied in the
1967 war.8 In a massively discriminating distribution of water, Israel does not permit
Arab Palestinians to drill new wells or deepen the existing ones for agricultural purpose,
and has restricted the annual consumption for West Bank Arabs to 125 mcm/year. Whereas Israel has drilled 36 new wells and subsidises water for its settlers (and not for Arabs),
Arab farmers cannot use more water than the fixed rate from 1967. By 2000, the per capita water allocation is expected to be in the proportion 10 (Israeli) to 1 (Arab).9 Arab
farmers increasingly give up or their territory is nationalised, as foreseen by Israeli
Occupation Law, when farming land lays dry for two years.10 More and more observers
see the water issue as the most difficult issue (beside East Jerusalem) for IsraeliPalestinian peace.
6
For the following account, see Reiner Luyken, “Wasser ist Frieden. Kein Wasser ist Krieg”, pp. 13-15.
Arnold Hottinger, “Wasser als Konfliktstoff. Eine Existenzfrage für Staaten im Nahen Osten”, Europa
Archiv, vol. 47, no. 6 (March 1992), p. 154.
8
Peter H. Gleick, “Water and Conflict”, pp. 85-86.
9
Miriam R. Lowi, “Bridging the Divide: Transboundary Resource Disputes and the Case of West Bank
Water”, International Security, vol. 18, no. 1 (Summer 1993), p. 126ff.
10
Arnold Hottinger, “Wasser als Konfliktstoff”, p. 163, n. 5.
7
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Water also links the Near East also to the Gulf. Saudi Arabia is pumping out of a
10000 years old “Disi-aquifer” (strething, beneath the desert, from Saudi Arabia till
Jordan), becoming the world’s sixth greatest wheat exporter (production of wheat from 17
505 tons to 4 million tons in 1991).11 Every ton of wheat has absorbed 2000 litres of
fossil, i.e. non-renewable water. Thus, one could also calculate the export of wheat as an
export of water which would be 8 million m3/year. Saudi Arabia wastes enormous
amounts of water in producing food, which could be imported at more cheaply. Now
Jordan has also started pumping out of this aquifer.
In short, this dependence on water of the Gulf states’ and of Israel’s agriculture is an
obvious security concern. “Indeed, every one of the Gulf states is strategically vulnerable
to full attack or sabotage on their desalting capacity.”12 Till now it was more perceived
as an incidence of sensitivity interdependence than of vulnerability. This vulnerability has
been made visible to the wider public by the oil spilling in the Gulf, which was threatening the desalination site on which Saudi Arabian agriculture depended. The conflict
showed quite insufficient Standard Operating Procedures with regard to defending oil and
water plants: the US government was barely equipped to defend Saudi water facilities. The
security measures are comparable to those used for postal and telephone systems.13
The interesting security factor in the region is that the US allies in the region, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, and Israel are all vulnerable as a result of their water-dependence. The
future solution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem, in particular, seems to be possibly
hampered by water. Israel has no real water reserves. An important water source, the
Yarkon/Taninim aquifer lies beneath both the Israeli and the occupied territories. The
control of Jordan water depends very much on Israeli control of the West Bank and the
Golan (and Southern Lebanon), i.e. the occupied territories. Finally, the Gaza strip’s water
will be unusable by the year 2000 when its population reaches 1 million — and the strip
might have reached full independence.
On the other hand, another US ally in the Middle East possesses the largest water
reserves in the region. Turkey’s Güney Anadolu Projesi (GAP) consisted in trying to
develop South-East Turkey through, among others, agricultural projects irrigated by a
massive dam system in particular on the Upper Euphrat. This project had heightened
tensions with both Iraq and Syria. Till now, it seems that Turkey handled water relatively
fairly — but the dam-system provides her with the control of the water’s flow. Two other
South-Eastern rivers are now planned to provide water to other countries in the region.
Turkey plans a water-pipeline system with one to Jordan and Syria, the other to the states
of the CGG. Turkish companies eventually have been approached, somewhat reluctantly,
by the Israeli Water Commission about export of water. One commentator notes, that the
US tries to broker the deal. A $US 20 billion US aid to finance Turkish water for Israel
11
For the following account, see Reiner Luyken, “Wasser ist Frieden. Kein Wasser ist Krieg”, pp. 13-15.
Joyce R. Starr, “Water Wars”, p. 20.
13
Joyce R. Starr, “Water Wars”, p. 20.
12
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
was discussed during the Baker trip immediately following the end of the Gulf
Conflict.14 Since then, there have been no news.
Thus, Neorealist power analysis does not show that a historically new field of security
has emerged. Environmental security is already an established field where interdependencies imply the control of important and relationally valued resources. Yet, it shows a
feedback to one specific resource, water, whose importance for the future of the stability
of the security complex is crucial because it is on the very “frontline” between Israel and
Palestine. But also in the Gulf, its control was underestimated before the conflict, thus the
insufficient Standard Operating Procedures. The Gulf conflict has increased water’s
strategic importance. It remains to see whether water interdependencies have possibly
gained an independent dynamic underlying the security complex that might not only feed,
but, in fact, originate future crisis and conflicts therein.
1.2. A war of space intelligence and communication
Wars not only reassess the relative importance of possibly prior neglected power instruments, but are always test cases for existing ones. In a relational understanding of power,
there is no power instrument whose exact efficacy can be assessed outside of its exercise.
The Gulf conflict is often presented as a commercial for US “high-tech” weaponry.
Especially the laser-guided “smart” bombs, on which cameras had been fixed, provided
“wonderful” pictures on accuracy attacks that make traditional defence look stone-aged,
including such shelters as the Amariya one whose mistaken destruction caused many civil
deaths and public outcry. True, the Patriot ground-air defence missiles often proved
inefficient against Iraqi Scuds, because they deflected rather than destroyed them. Yet they
provided a first usable weapon which will proliferate in close parallel to offensive missiles
in the region and elsewhere. Tomahawk Cruise Missiles could be used before at least
some of them would be destroyed under START. Again, they proved very important in
the strategy of attacking the C³I, for which they were also originally planned on the
European theatre. Sometimes their accuracy was diminished by flak artillery which
deflected them, as for instance in the famous “scoop” when it touched a Baghdad hotel
where foreign journalists were accommodated. The F-117A, so-called stealth fighters, were
important in delivering some of the important smart bombs although their use was limited
to avoid possible losses (laser also makes stealth visible).
These weapons impressed and demoralised the Iraqi army, and kept Israel from
counteracting Scud attacks. The high-tech image gave the US the credibility to “run”
attacks and defences that were in fact outside its reach, if one considers that only a small
part of the bombing was done with “intelligent” weapons. The proliferation of missiles
and anti-missiles might impede the material edge of the US, but the accuracy of its
weapons remains unchallenged.
14
Abbas Shiblak, “The deepening tragedy of the Palestinians“, in Victoria Brittain (ed.), The Gulf Between
Us. The Gulf War and Beyond (London: Virago Press, 1991), p. 130.
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Even more unchallenged is another part of the US weaponry, which turned out to be
the most important: space communication and control. US supremacy in the future will
depend on to what extent it can keep this advantageous control. As usual, wars that show
the efficacy of a power instrument make it known, thus more vulnerable in the next
contest. It can be expected that the control the space will become a major issue, and not
for the SDI as was initially thought.
For some commentators, it was the first space war, because heavily dependent on the
wide array of orbiting satellites.15 The war was far away from Washington, but satellites
made on-line communication possible between Saudi Arabia and the US, and on the
different fronts within the conflict area. The same satellites proved important for
intelligence, that is in particular for early warnings on enemy movements and for the
direction and activation of Patriots. As long as the efficacy of Patriots depends on specific
military satellites, the US can still export the missiles if it controls the satellite
proliferation. The satellites provided precise navigation data in the shapeless desert, the
important weather forecasting for the sorties and the exact terrain mapping for the flight
paths of the Tomahawks.
The importance of independent intelligence has been revealed by the photos that may
have convinced Saudi Arabia to reverse its policy and to align officially with the US. At
that initial stage, there was no independent control possible. This monopoly of quick
intelligence has been replayed again in the Gulf, when President Bush ordered an attack
on Iraqi missile sites that were allegedly beyond the coalition’s accepted line in January
1993, just before leaving the White House. Since this had some domestic rationales (fait
accompli for the military budget of the new administration), the accuracy of the official
justification was doubted. The international community had, however, no way to check
if Iraq was indeed faulty on the issue. It is to be expected that both some corners of the
UN and some other countries will push for relieving the US of the burden of their quasimonopoly. The Europeans will get an intelligence satellite Helios in 1993.16 Russia could
make their intelligence more widely available. Private US or international media firms
might come out with military intelligence.
The amplified importance of on-line communication and diffusion does, of course, not
stop here. The Gulf war was the first on-line “reality-show” in the history of war,
controlled by US satellite news firms and strengthened by the pool-system that excluded
foreigners. As usual, the efficient use of power instruments and the awareness of their
importance makes them more critical for future use. Thus, the Gulf conflict has made
public opinion more sensitive to the power inherent in the information regime, as for
instance, about the “americanization” of its discourse. This can be seen in the mocking
15
16
For the following, see Eugene Carroll, Jr & Gene La Rocque, “Victory in the Desert”, pp. 43-46.
François Heisbourg, “Quelles leçons stratégiques?”, Politique Étrangère, vol. 56, no. 2 (Été 1991), p.
419.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
reaction to the US landing, and its coverage, in Somalia on 9 December 199217, where
Marine Corps landed during the night like in a full-fledged war. Since the landing was
widely advertised beforehand, on the beach there were more journalists then Somalis and,
of course, no local troops. The spotlights needed to report live from the beach were so
strong as to blind the US soldiers. The discrepancy between the energy invested and the
news content was blatant; so was the ambiguous role of the media.
2. Installing a balance of wealth and legitimacy?
The assessment of the feedback power dynamics on the regional security structure concentrates on different aspects. There is the regional distribution of power resources, in
particular military, financial, and political (legitimacy or national cohesion). Then, the
interpenetration of the regional and the central distribution of power will be reassessed,
as for instance questions of a shifting autonomy of the region or of new regimes within
which both levels “inter-depend”.
The Neorealist story emphasises the question of the future “stability” of the region,
by which is meant both the recurrence of conflicts as such, and their non-violent resolution. The war is generally judged as a stage of the construction of a more “balanced” and
therefore peaceful region. The focus on stability is a product of the Realist focus on
“equilibria” and “balances” which are considered to be the most stable environments
possible, and thus the best we can do to avoid war. It is, however, also the result of a US
(and generally Western) prism through which the region is apprehended. No war means
in particular no violent military involvement of the military arbiter, the US, in the region.
A stable region is the most “economic” power management for an outside hegemon.
Yet, stability is not only to be achieved by military deterrence, as important as this
instrument is in Realist discourse. Security analysis integrates other features needed to
achieve relations of mutual security, which, in turn, lay the fundament of a more stable
order.18 In that respect, this section reflects exactly the section on the origins of the
conflict to be found in a mix of different imbalances in different sectors. It has to be so.
The feedback dynamic part of the Neorealist analysis must add an annual ring to the
regional tree of history, a new layer to the sediments of prior equilibria. In this micromacro link, indirect power analysis has its place whenever an actor does not look at the
outcome as an aim as such, but as a means to rework the systemic environment within
which future actions will take place.
Therefore, this chapter is organised around sections that will take up the different
security areas (or policy-contingency frameworks) and analyse changes in the inter-
17
Marc Ferro, “Médias et intelligence du monde”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 40, no. 466 (janvier
1993), p. 32.
18
For stability based on a wide-spanned conception of a regional security system, see George Joffe,
”Middle Eastern View of the Gulf Conflict and its Aftermath”, pp. 197f.
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penetration with the central balance therein. A last section will concentrate on the Gulf
conflict’s effect on the Northern balance independent of the region.
The decisions not to start with military security as one would expect of a Realist
analysis, lies in the fact that this Neorealist-Neoinstitutionalist version of relational power
analysis has come up with an explanation of the triggers of the conflict to lie in financial
disequilibria and political illegitimacies of the system, i.e. in the economic and political
security sectors. The feedback should show how this problem has been affected by the
conflict and its outcome. This seems to have been the major policy message. After the
conflict, on 6 March 1991, the US administration gave four indication for future stability
in the Gulf: a security system, arms control, political and economic restructuring, and the
Arab-Israeli question. Yet, after an initial concern for the political and economic rationale,
which was quickly downplayed, the security focus shifted eventually to the military sector.
Thus, the exposition follows the logical and historical order.
2.1. Political Order in Changing Security Structures
Future stability in the region, so the general argument goes, is dependent on both an
economic restructuring and more political participation. A hegemon that imposes order
through classical military means is not enough. The order must be sustained in the
region.19 Implicitly, this uses ideas from the literature on political development and
modernisation. The best known is perhaps still Huntington’s gap-theory, where domestic
order in societies in times of greater societal mobilisation must rely on a wider representation. This can be done in the social, economic and/or political sphere, the most stable
being those able to combine them, because this allows them internal flexibility. Presupposing change, survival depends on adaptation capacity.
The financial effect of the conflict on the vulnerability interdependence in the region
seems not to presage future stability. The cost of the war was. Saudi Arabia’s war effort
was $US 54 billion, for some commentators even $US 65 billion.20 $US 4.4 billion of
foreign deposits have left Saudi Arabia. The cost of repatriation and the Saudi emigration
from the North-East is estimated at $US 3 billion. They bought weapons for $US 13
billion from the US in 1990, and another 17 were scheduled for 1991. Direct aid of
around $US 1.5 billion has been given to Egypt (another $US 6.6 billion for a debt relief),
$US 1 billion to Syria, $US 3-4 billion to help the countries affected by the embargo
(Jordan, Turkey, Egypt). It needs to repatriate some of its foreign assets (estimated
between $US 40 to 70 billion). Kuwait, the other rich country, needs $US 30-40 billion
for the reconstruction of their oil production, and paid 0.5 billion/month for the exile
Kuwaitis during the occupation. Kuwait seems, after first estimations, to have lost 10%
of its oil reserves. There is an estimated loss of $US 9 billion/year for the oil production
19
George Joffe, “Middle Eastern View of the Gulf Conflict and its Aftermath”, p. 198.
For this and the following figures, see Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe: nuages après la tempête”, Politique
Étrangère, vol. 56, no. 2 (Été 1991), p. 460.
20
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
at least in 1991. Not only the oil wells, but all the integrated downstream industries are
touched: refinery and distribution. Kuwait had to import 180 000 barrels/day from Saudi
Arabia for its oil industries and also chemical products to fuel its chemical industries
relying on gas.21 Kuwait has become rather more dependent on Saudi Arabia.
This rejoins a long-term dynamic which has undermined regional autonomy in the last
decade. Oil money was fuelling this autonomy; the disastrous crash of oil prices which
at times pushed it in real terms under the level of 1973 before the price raise has
accordingly diminished this autonomy and redistributed resources more generally to the
non-oil producing world, the North included. The financial losses of the Gulf region in
oil revenues (OAPEC): from $US 217.15 billion in 1980 (absolute high) to $US 55.8 in
1986 to estimated $US 98 billion in 1992.The last increase is due to a larger share in the
world oil market and not to the higher prices during the first months of the crisis. Middle
Eastern oil is expected to cover 50% of oil exports in 2000. The damages of the two wars
are estimated at comprehensively $US 800 billion, $US 350 billion for the first, the rest
for the last one.22
The low oil price level was one of the triggers of the conflict. Again, the dynamic
does not seem to reverse the basic problem. A coordinated oil price policy as decided in
July 1990 before the Gulf war, was given up during the conflict on 29 August under
massive pressure from the US.23 After the OPEC meeting in March 1991, during which
Saudi Arabia fiercely resisted cutting the OPEC production by 2 million barrels a day, 1.3
million of which would be Saudi oil. Saudi Arabia refused until January 1992 an
extraordinary meeting of the OPEC. The Saudis’ official position is that new restriction
on the production could be made, but with a shrinking percentage for all producers. Yet,
Saudi Arabia as the swing-producer exceeded its production by 60% (compared to the July
1990 system) to take the Kuwaiti and Iraqi part. The majority of OPEC countries, on the
other hand, want to come back to the last agreement (Ecuador, Algeria, Gabun, Libya,
Indonesia, Nigerian and Iran).24 Yet, as long as the Saudi resist, there will be no price
and quantity control. Thus, countries compete for new oil concessions, where the vain
hope for higher prices is given up. Even Iran is aligning itself to the “moderate” policy
of higher output and contracts, like the one with TOTAL which resembles yesterday’s
concessions very much.25
The consequences of this development are the following. Kuwaiti dependence on
Saudi Arabia means that Saudi decisions will play an even major role in the Gulf balance.
Furthermore, it seems that declining oil incomes and high reconstruction costs predispose
Gulf states to be more avaricious with their money. It also seems that the new generation
21
Véronique Maurus, “Au Koweït, l’industrie pétrolière est dévastée”, Le Monde, 15 mars 1991, p. 24.
Nikolas Sarkis, “L’inquiétante baisse des revenus du pétrole”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 40, no. 467
(février 1993), p. 6. These last figures are obviously tentative.
23
Abbas Alnawrawi, “Iraq: economic consequences of the 1991 Gulf War and future outlook”, p. 344.
24
Karen Söhler, “Spätfolgen des Golfkrieges”, Die Zeit, vol. 47, no. 9 (21-27 February 1992).
25
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït”, p. 5.
22
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of Saudi leadership argues for less financial intervention in regional affairs, because petrodollars have been unable to guarantee external security.26
Thus, the whole region has been financially weakened, with the exception of Egypt.
With $US 13.6 billion cancelled debt, Egypt seems at first sight to be the regional winner.
The balance sheet is, however, more complicated. The war nearly destroyed the second
most important sector for foreign currency, tourism. From June 1989 to June 1990, it
brought $US 2.5 billion in income. There was hardly any tourist from June 1990 until the
end of 1991. 700.000 people are officially reported to work in the tourism sector.27
Another problem is the return of around 1 million guestworkers from the Gulf states, both
for their economic and social integration and for the foreign exchange losses of their
remittances, estimated at around $US 1 billion/year.28 Finally, the embargo has much
diminished the income from the Suez channel. Egyptian officials have estimated the total
loss of foreign exchange for 1990 alone at $US 3 billion.29 The attempts to use acquired
leverage via the World Bank or the new constituted regional fund for development have
been disappointing. Egypt hoped many reconstruction contracts would be won by Egyptian
firms that possibly employ also Egyptian workforce in the Gulf. At least for the immediate
reconstruction, they have been disappointed.30
All this shows, that if financial redistribution is needed for political stability, then the
conflict has reduced the room for manoeuvre. But there is seemingly a new structure for
regional development. Baker’s idea of a regional Fund for Development financed by Gulf
states for a better distribution of wealth has eventually been taken up albeit not as initially
thought. As an outside country, the US perceives the Middle East as basically one
“problem” to be solved by one structure. Yet, the coalition of the war has been the Swan
song of Arab unity. Baker’s idea would presuppose a common Gulf structure, but Saudi
Arabia is less and less willing to risk its resources for it. Thus, the creation of an Arab
Fund for Development is not a real multilateral organisation, but in fact a system of
bilateral aid, where the countries of the GCC give money to those that have been on the
coalition side during the war: Syria, Morocco, and above all Egypt which could be
released from its whole foreign debt ($US 31 billion). Excluded are Yemen, Tunisia,
Libya and the PLO. Money will also be given to the private sector, and not the public,
thereby imitating the strategy less of the World Bank, than of the EBRD. The initial
26
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït”, pp. 4ff., 14-15.
Alexandre Buccianti & Yves Heller, “Les dividendes du conflit en Egypte”, Le Monde, 27 février 1991.
28
Such losses are not limited to the Middle East, but link up to other regions. India, for instance, has to
integrate 170 000 Indians back from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and accommodate for a diminished export in
the region. See for this point, Gilbert Etienne, “Craquements en Asie du Sud. La mutation de l’Inde et du
Pakistan est rendue encore plus difficile par la crise du Golfe”, Le Monde, 22 janvier 1991.
29
Bassam Tibi, “Die irakische Kuwait-Invasion und die Golfkrise”, p. 19. The amount might have been
intentionally overstated.
30
Volker Perthes, “Abhängigkeiten und Entwicklungschancen der arabischen Welt”, Aus Politik und
Zeitgeschichte, B 30-31 (19 July 1991), p. 19.
27
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
capital of $US 15-18 billion is coming from the countries of the GCC.31 If financial
disequilibrium was one of the triggers of the conflicts, the region has not been stabilised.
2.2. The prospects for democracy
The question of democracy enters Neorealist power analysis only to the extent that
democratic systems are presupposed to be more stable. Higher stability does not imply a
reduction of conflicts, but a higher probability not to resort to war to resolve them.
Existing democratic regimes are stabilising, because (1) their governments are said to
behave more responsibly (the guarantee against psychopaths) and (2) their social systems
integrate and respond to popular demands (the guarantee against “mob”-induced
expansionism). On the other hand, the change to democracy can produce setbacks, both
if it is achieved by means of evolution or revolution. Realists in general (and US policy
in particular) have been aware of this problem and often preferred authoritarian regimes,
which are enlightened enough to make “reasonable” policies so as to preempt popular
discontent, and are aligned with the US.
Thus, it is in the context of political security that democracy enters into Neorealist
analysis. An unstable system is a threat, not because of its power, but because of its
“weakness”.32 Therefore, the power analysis part of Neorealism is limited in this context.
I shall confine myself to a short sketch of the Gulf conflict’s impact on the stability of
domestic systems.
The Second Gulf War has given a time-span to resolve some origins of the conflict:
domestic political instability, the inequality between Arab nations, and the ideological
competition between modernising regimes and so-called feudal Gulf states. With today’s
hindsight, the US has lost the momentum and indulged in short-term stabilising policies.
It looks like a transfer of the sphere-of-influence policy, as applied today in Latin
America, to US Middle East policies.
First a look to those countries that had engaged in a moderate opening to some more
pluralism: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen. A few months after the end of the conflict,
commentators were already pointing to the fact that in three of these countries Islamic
fundamentalism will be the winner of the post-war33, as it happened most prominently
in the Algerian June 1991 elections, followed by a coup. Yemen might be less touched
by it. But its neighbour Saudi Arabia, strengthened through the war, does not see with a
candid eye either Yemenite unification nor steps to democratisation. The aid embargo and
slow border negotiations are an indication of mounting Saudi pressure.34
31
Véronique Maurus, “Six pétromonarchies du Golfe envisagent de créer un Fonds arabe de développement“, Le Monde, 30 mars 1991.
32
Buzan’s distinction.
33
Michael C. Hudson, “After the Gulf War: Prospects for Democratization in the Arab World”, Middle
East Journal, vol. 45, no. 3 (Summer 1991), pp. 427-40.
34
Addendum: Saudi Arabia has been playing an important role in the recent civil war in Yemen which
in fact split up the country again.
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For the other countries, there has been no indication that democratisation, or more
precisely any move that would counteract the factors originating the conflict, will follow.
In the Gulf, Kuwait’s Emir, although having promised a move to reestablish the constitution and to open the consultative parliament, became famous for allowing a witch-hunting
of Palestinians considered collaborators of Saddam Hussein. Robert Fisk quotes US
officials as having found out that the Emir had planned the expulsion of 200.000
Palestinians, and that members of the Emir’s family were part of the death squads that
more or less arbitrarily murdered Palestinians after the “liberation”.35 The population has
been reduced from 2.2 million to 1.2 million people. None of the non-Kuwaiti minorities
should represent more than 10% of the population.36 In the parliamentary elections that
were finally held on 5 October 1992, political parties were forbidden. Only 1/7 of the
600000 Kuwaiti citizens were voters. Understandably, the new Parliamentarians usually
coming from the rich merchant families are not particularly eager to allow greater
participation.37 In Saudi Arabia, on March 1992, King Fahd announced the creation of
a Consulting Council of 60 persons. Free elections are excluded. If anything, the Gulf
conflict has worsened the prospects for more participation.
3. A new regional balance of power
The feedback on the regional security structure is characterised by a disaggregation of the
aggressor of the war, of the Arab world in general, and by a renewed but changed impact
of the central balance on the regional one. It creates an in-between situation between mere
US “penetration” in the Gulf and a unilateral “overlay”.
[Overlay] is quite distinct from the normal process of intervention by great powers into
the affairs of local security complexes. Intervention usually reinforces the local security
dynamics: overlay subordinates them to the larger pattern of major power rivalries, and
may even obliterate them (…) To be feasible, overlay requires either or both of a
massive, locally applicable, military superiority by the external power(s), and a strong
will on the part of the local states to invite a large and sustained external presence. It
also requires a strong enough interest on the part of the external power(s) to justify the
costs of extended presence … such conditions are difficult, if not impossible, to find in
the contemporary world. The Americans discovered the cost of attempting overlay
against the grain of local conditions in Vietnam. 38
Maybe overcoming the Vietnam-Syndrome meant a new form of relations between the
central and regional security systems, a crucial link in the “new world order”.
35
36
Robert Fisk, “Kuwait’s royal torturers”, The Independent, 27 April 1991, p. 1.
Michael Schwelien, “Kuwait ist frei. Danke Amerika!”, Die Zeit, vol. 47, no. 33 (7-13 August 1992),
p. 10.
37
Gilles Kraemer, “Deux ans après, la démocratie reste balbutiante au Kuwait”, Le Monde diplomatique,
vol. 40, no. 467 (février 1993), pp. 4-5.
38
Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, pp. 190, 220-21.
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3.1. The institutionalisation of Iraqi political insecurity
Half of the Republican Guard had been stationed in the North (at the Turkish border and
for the defence of Baghdad) and another part was able to escape from the US attack which
stopped short before encircling them. Only a few days after the cease-fire on 27 February,
in the Southern regions, Shi‘ites rebelled against Saddam Hussein. They attacked the local
representatives of the Iraqi power in the cities, displaced them and declared independence
of the cities for central rule. At the beginning of March, the Kurdish minority rose against
the Iraqi government. For the first time it started from the cities (Sulaymaniyah, Kirkuk,
Arbil, Dohuk) which are more difficult to defend against government troops than the
mountains. The Kurdish Peshmerga came to help them. The remaining Iraqi troops were
surrendering nearly without fight. In the meanwhile, the two major Iraqi Kurdish groups,
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan under Jalal Talabani and the Kurdish Democratic Party
of Masud Barzani had formed a united Kurdish Front together with other groups.
The uprising was encouraged by the US administration. President Bush himself called
on the Iraqi population at two moments on 15 February 1991 and on 1 March (i.e. after
the ground war) to use the momentum to get rid of Saddam Hussein. The US shot down
two Iraqi airplanes on 20 and 22 March and alluded that the US would interfere with Iraqi
airforce and helicopters to protect the Kurdish uprising.39
Shi‘ite groups declared their aim to establish an Islamic Republic in the South. At this
point, the Iranian government abandoned its policy of neutrality and shouldered the
uprising by sending Iraqi Shi‘ites that had escaped to Iran during the first Gulf War and
trained militarily since. Concomitantly, Saudi Arabia pressured an already shaken US
government to allow for either a military coup or to leave Saddam Hussein in power. Also
the CIA seems to have come to the conclusion that it would be best for the future US
power in the region to keep a weakened and blackmailable Saddam Hussein than anyone
else. The US decided not to help the uprising in order to leave the Iraqi political system
in political insecurity whose exploitation should be reserved to the US-led coalition.
The US legitimated its U-turn officially with the shaky argument that it had no UN
mandate for intervening in domestic Iraqi affairs, and domestically by alluding to the
morass of civil war, talking about “Lebanisation”, mobilising another Vietnam myth of
a “quagmire”— “a situation in which a country with a high stake in the satisfactory
resolution of a conflict suffers steady losses without making evident progress.”40
Probably such a direct military action would not have been necessary. A report written by
the US Senate Committee of Foreign Affairs on 2 May 1991, related that Iraqi officers
had approached the Iraqi opposition at the beginning of March offering forces to help the
uprising — if they were assured of US backing. Since this was not forthcoming, they
39
Arnold Hottinger, “Die arabische Welt nach dem Golf-Krieg”, Europa-Archiv, no. 15-16 (1991), p. 439,
446-47.
40
Lawrence Freedman, “Escalators and quagmires: expectations and the use of force”, International
Affairs (London), vol. 67, no. 1 (1991), p. 26.
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cancelled their offer.41 Once the Guard was left with no choice but to follow Saddam
Hussein, he ordered such brutal massacres that they had to assure his victory in order to
avoid revenge. Having “pacified” the South, the Kurdish uprising was tackled, the
occupied cities reconquered.
As to the fleeing 2 million Kurds that reached the Turkish and Iranian border, the US
was forced to act by (1) a French initiative, the UNSC resolution 688 imposing on the
Iraqi government to respect of Human Rights, to accept humanitarian missions and UN
observers, (2) an idea by the Turkish President Turgut Özal taken up and propagated by
UK Prime Minister John Major to install security zones in Iraq. First, aid started to arrive.
The US was giving around $US 10 million, that is the value of two Cruise Missiles. The
Europeans gave 150 million ECU.42 Blankets, tents, food and other material was flown
in with coalition forces. Second, the “Operation Provide Comfort”, whereby a free zone
was created at the Turkish-Iraqi border, where Iraqi troops were forbidden to enter. A nofly zone was installed north of the 36th Parallel. This allowed the return of many Kurdish
families to their homes or prepared UN camps. UN observers were placed in the neighbouring cities. The coalition troops were withdrawn at the beginning of July 1991.
However, on 12 July a rapid deployment force was created in Turkey (called “Operation
Raised Hammer”) which was prepared to intervene if Iraq did not respect resolution 687
(destruction of its nuclear potential) and 688 (UN humanitarian action).43
To constrain Saddam Hussein to reveal all the ABC construction and fabrication sites,
in particular the UK and the US drove the UN to continue the embargo, decided before
the war. Yet, the Iraqi government obstructed the working of the United National Special
Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) which was established in May 1989 in accordance with
UNSC resolution 687 (ceasefire) to carry out immediate on-site inspection of Iraq’s ABC
capacities and to provide for their elimination.44 This escalated into a new UNSC
resolution 707 (15 August 1991), which extended the mandate of the UNSCOM. Yet, the
latter’s control of Iraqi oil revenues makes the reconstruction of Iraq impossible. The
UNSC resolution authorised Iraq to sell oil for $US 1.6. billion worth, 30% of which will
be used in a fund to settle war claims and the remaining 70% to be employed by the UN
to buy medicines for distribution in Iraq. Since oil is the only foreign currency provider
and foreign assistance and technology is needed to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure, as
for instance the loss of 90% power generating capacity, Iraq was forced to get
41
Arnold Hottinger, “Die arabische Welt nach dem Golf-Krieg”, p. 440, 447, fn. 11.
Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, “Die bittere Bilanz des Golfkrieges”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 16 (12-18 April
1991), p. 1.
43
Serge Marti, “Les Etats-Unis mettent en place une force alliée «de déploiement rapide» en Turquie”,
Le Monde, 14/15 juillet 1991, speaks of 3000 soldiers coming from the US, UK, France, Turkey, Italy, Spain,
Belgium, and the Netherlands covered by air-forces.
44
For an account of the obstructions, see Thierry A. Brun, “Sous la tutelle de la faim”, Le Monde
diplomatique, vol. 38, no. 435 (décembre 1991). For the findings of the UNSCOM, see Rolf Ekéus, “The
United Nations Special Commission on Iraq”, in SIPRI Yearbook 1992: World Armaments and Disarmament
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 509-524.
42
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
international credits from the Paris Club and the IMF.45 If financial troubles were at the
outset of the conflict, the winners did everything to worsen the situation. Following a
similar logic, the UN provided medicines to relieve malnutrition and medical shortenings
as reported by missions of UNICEF and the WHO in January 1991, and of the UN in
March and June 1991, but no money to reconstruct the wrecked electricity and water
distribution which was behind the epidemics.46
The Iraqi regime, riddled with problems, has increased its policing and control. Not
only is Saddam Hussein in power, but his power has even extended within Ba‘ath, the
army and also the Guard. The conflict’s outcome has given birth to a profoundly
irredentist and anti-multilateralist regime.
3.2. The regional configuration: the disaggregation of the Arab world
The economic power management by an outside power presupposes the cooptation of
regional actors into the system to share the burden. As in the aborted attempts in the
financial sector, the “Arabisation” of US foreign policy in the Middle East does not seem
to be working. Again, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are blocking all attempts to develop an
Arab security system. If Egypt hoped to cash in some political advantages from its
abandonment of the traditional policy which consisted of brokering inner-Arab solutions,
it has been disappointed. In other words, King Hussein might prove right on the long run.
The story of Arabisation reads like a Saudi “Salami”-tactic to use the US to get rid of all
regional challengers to its power, step by step.
The attempt to “Arabise” began in December 1990 when the GCC, gathered at a
summit in Doha, capital of Quatar, issued a declaration on regional security arrangements
in which Iran, Pakistan and Turkey were invited to take part. On 6 March 1991, the socalled Damascus Declaration excludes them again. It is limited to the 8 Arab partners in
the coalition, namely the GCC, Syria, and Egypt. It proposed a new security system where
Egypt and Syria would constitute an Arab peace-keeping force to defend the Gulf states,
for which the latter would pay via economic cooperation.47 Yet, since then, the Gulf
states are dragging their feet. The Sabah family has repeatedly played down the Arab
involvement in the coalition effort. Kuwait has even forbidden an Egypt military aircraft
to land in Kuwait. Egypt refuses to deploy forces, as the US has asked it to do, before the
Kuwaitis have not officially invited them. Egypt tried to become the (well-paid) guardian
of the petro-monarchies, whereas the latter did their best to ignore it.48 Despite US
45
Abbas Alnawrawi, “Iraq: economic consequences of the 1991 Gulf War”, pp. 347-349.
Such a policy furthers doubts about the winner’s intentions, in particular if it is true that the allied air
raids were targeting infrastructure in order to make Iraq dependent on foreign help - which was then refused.
Abbas Alnawrawi, “Iraq: economic consequences of the 1991 Gulf War”, p. 347 quotes a Washington Post
article by B. Gellman (23 June 1991) for this.
47
Martin Indyk, “Watershed in the Middle East”, pp. 75-76.
48
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Koweït”, pp. 3, 13-14.
46
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pressure, the idea has been buried since.49 Thus, not only Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, but
also Egypt and Syria have been excluded from the Gulf balance by the Saudi and Kuwaiti
governments.
Since the Iran-Iraq rivalry for regional hegemony was traditionally the basic dynamic
factor, the new security system must take account of it. Yet, again Neorealist power
analysis cannot but deplore the shortsightedness of the policies pursued. Iran, initially
invited to take part in a future system, was eventually rebuffed by the Gulf states (in
particular Saudi Arabia) for its advances after the war. Not being integrated in a regional
security regime, Iran is engaged in a rapid rearmament programme. It made weapon deals
with Russia, North Korea and Argentina. It started a diplomatic offensive to gain leverage
by allying itself to those countries excluded to post-war benefits. Yemen was visited by
Parliament’s President Karrubi, and Rafsanjani went to Khartum. Whereas the Iran-Yemen
(and also Iran-Qatar, see below) rapprochement can be seen as directed against Saudi
Arabia, the links to Sudan are certainly directed against Egypt. Sudan reintroduced the
Sharia in March 1991. The Saudi press analysed this as the height of the Egyptian-Iranian
conflict: a way of Iran to get into Egypt’s backyard as Egypt (by helping massively Iraq
during the first Gulf war) was getting into the Iranian sphere of interest. It could be seen
as a start of the Iranian bid for regional hegemony.50 If Iran was a possible hegemon,
other systems should have been found to preempt its action, and not to provoke its
rearmamament. “It is also clear that no security system in the region can really be
effective if the major Gulf power, Iran, is excluded.”51
With regard to Iraq, the “equilibration of the balance of power” in the Gulf means
that it is no longer a threat to its neighbours.52 Yet, this straightforward answer is only
a first step in a Neorealist analysis aware of the long-term effects of conflict outcomes on
security structures. Consequently,
in a post-war environment, what sort of Iraq would be acceptable to the region and to
the international community … If Iraq is so weakened by a war that it runs the risk of
being dismembered itself or falling under the control of radical Shi‘ites with close links
to Iran, it soon could pose a new set of problems for the alliance.53
Thus, US wants defeat of Hussein, but not of Iraq. This explains the meandering about
the Kurdish and Shi‘it civil war (6 weeks), and the hope for a military putsch. Yet, no
steps were taken to overthrow him when that was possible (see previous section). Waiting,
as Iran had been doing in vain for 8 years, is not enough.
49
Steven Simon, “US strategy in the Persian Gulf”, Survival, vol. 34, no. 3 (Autumn 1992), pp. 87-88.
For the following, see Wolfgang Köhler, “Der wahre Sieger im Golfkrieg”, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, 28 January 1992.
51
George Joffe, “Middle Eastern Views of the Gulf Conflict and its Aftermath”, p. 198.
52
Lothar Rühl, “Der Krieg am Golf. Militärischer Verlauf und politisch-strategische Probleme”, Europa
Archiv, no. 8 (1991), p. 246.
53
Geoffrey Kemp, “The Gulf Crisis: diplomacy or force?”, p. 512.
50
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Yet, the major mistake for future stability is what one could call the “Versailles
Syndrome”, i.e. the setting up of a peace that produces not stability, but an unremovable
irredentism.54 In conformity to resolution 687 of the UNSC, a UN commission fixed the
new border between Kuwait and Iraq in April 1992. It did not limit itself to install the
status quo, but favoured Kuwait. The only notable Iraqi port, Um-Quasr, in all prior
border drawings entirely part of Iraq, has been divided in order to deprive Iraq of portuary
facilities. This implies a complete landlock of Iraq and is unacceptable for any Iraqi
government, authoritarian or not.55 Consequently, commentators, and to a lesser extent
politicians, seem afraid of the risk of isolating Iraq via the unacceptable demand of
respecting once and forever the border with Kuwait and by high reparations.56
Thus Saudi Arabia has got rid of all possible regional interference in its policies.
Neither in the Gulf, with Iraq or Iran, nor in the Mahrek, with Egypt and Syria, is there
any power left to challenge Saudi policy. But Saudi Arabia is not strong enough to stay
alone. If Arabisation does not work, the US is committed to be present itself. Bahrain and
Kuwait (September 1991) have for the first time in Middle Eastern history signed bilateral
defence agreements (10 years) with the US. Saudi Arabia made a tacit agreement. All
agreements made US military dreams come true. They are about prepositioning of military
equipment, joint exercises and access to military bases (in particular airports).57 Yet, as
one analyst notes, the Gulf monarchies seem to pursue the foreign policy aim of entraping
and materially interesting a number of countries in their defence. The different military
agreements and weapon deals are like portfolio investment where the risk is spread over
different insurance companies.58 Having rebuffed the regional powers, the GCC has
become completely dependent on the US, and tries to make this dependence mutual.
To complete the shattering of the Arab world, the war reopened border questions in
the region. On 30 september 1992, there was a border clash between Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, near Khafous. Qatar is seen by some GCC countries as a Troian horse for its
renewed contact with Iran for a defence arrangement and for having send back its
ambassador to Baghdad. At the border clash, Iran and Iraq are supporting Qatar which
boycotts the GCC meetings. Following Egyptian mediation, the border issue has been
resolved giving right to Qatar’s claims — but the independent foreign policy of Qatar
54
This is a repeated point in the Realist literature. Writing on Vienna 1815, but meaning Versailles 191819, Henry Kissinger castigated this short-sighted “unrealistic” policy.
55
Alain Gresh, “Regain d’activisme dans le Golfe”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 40, no. 467 (février
1993), p. 3, fn. 3.
56
George Joffe, “Middle Eastern Views of the Gulf Conflict and its Aftermath”, p. 198.
57
See Martin Indyk, “Watershed in the Middle East”, p. 76 and Alain Gresh, “Regain d’activisme dans
le Golfe”, p. 3.
58
Olivier Da Lage, “Illusoire sécurité collective sans l’Irak et l’Iran”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 40,
no. 467 (février 1993), p. 4.
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seems to be the price for it. Border disputes have also arisen anew between Yemen and
Saudi Arabia. Negotiations have started in September 1992, and will drag on.59
In conclusion, one can say that no form of a post-conflict security regime has been
found that would integrate the major regional actors. The result seems to be a military
security system based on bilateral US-Egypt and US-Arab Peninsula relations. The system
is characterised by a US deterrence force strengthened by prepositioning and regional
rearmamement (see below). US deterrence works for Iraq (and implicitly against Iran),
whose irredentism can hardly be opposed by mere force and humiliation. The attacks in
January 1992 have pushed the population closer to Saddam Hussein, because he was
considered the only leader able to defend national pride against Western humiliations.60
No system to integrate the two major regional hegemons in a common structure has been
devised.
The old play of changing partnerships has not been fundamentally altered. The “rules”
of the Gulf still apply, namely “the inability of any regional power to achieve dominance,
and the inability of any outside power to manage the region successfully on its own.”61
Some ranks have been exchanged. Syria has taken over the place left by Iraq (which had
taken, at the time, the role of the Shah’s Iran).62 The US’ two Arab placeholders, Saudi
Arabia and Egypt, have exchanged their role through the conflict. Saudi Arabia is taking
the most pro-US line, as did Egypt after Camp David, whereas Egypt has tried to become
the Arab conciliator.
Denied a role as defender of the Arab gulf, Egypt was left to play handmaiden to
America’s new dominant status in the region. Since all the Arab states now sought good
relations with Washington, Cairo offered its services as broker. Promoting Syrian
relations with the Untied states was particularly important to the creation of an
Egyptian-led postwar Arab order.63
The entire Middle Eastern Security Complex has become even more disaggregated. The
Gulf conflict was a consequence of the decline of Arab unity and the failure of panArabism.64 It destroyed what was left. Generally the Arab world has become articulated
in a construct of subsystems. In the Gulf, the GCC will become more and more integrated
under Saudi auspices. North Africa is organised around the Union Maghreb Arabe (Lbya,
Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania), created on 17 February 1989, which elaborated
common political solution for the crisis. Marginalised from the Middle East, the UMA is
refocusing on Europe, as can be seen in the security plans for Conference for Security and
59
It seems that Saudi Arabia is trying to exacerbate the economic crisis in Yemen to stop the democratisation process. See Olivier La Lage, “Illusoire sécurité collective sans l’Iran et l’Irak”, pp. 3-4.
60
Alain Gresh, “Regain d’activisme dans le Golfe”, p. 3.
61
Shahram Chubin, “Post-war Gulf security”, p. 152.
62
Bassam Tibi, “Die irakische Kuwait-Invasion und die Golfkrise”, pp. 22-23.
63
Martin Indyk, “Watershed in the Middle East”, p. 77.
64
Bernhard Lewis, “Rethinking the Middle East”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 71, no. 4 (Fall 1992), pp. 99f.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Cooperation in the Mediterrenean (CSCM) or the French proposal of “five-plus-five.” In
the Near East, the system pivots around the Arab-Israeli conflict. These subregional
groupings withstand disruption, and have already begun to replace the activities of the
Arab League.65
That the existing structures fall apart must not mean that the conflicts therein can be
more easily resolved. It means that its stability depends on making any linkages between
them impossible. Instead of gaining flexibility by playing out one area against the other,
the present equilibrium is most inflexible. It allows for the status quo or a major disruption. The only hope of loosening the Gordian knot, is the Arab-Israeli question.
Otherwise, the peace is just the temporary silence until repressed problems will burst out.
3.3. The central-regional link (I): proliferation in the Gulf
Once the regional structures are not working, stability must be achieved through the
control of the means that regional actors, at least those willing to overthrow the status
quo, are able to develop. If only regional actors had no weapons to threaten the North
either directly or through their regional pions. If the major lesson of the war could be
called that only nuclear weapons can defend Southern countries from Northern attack66,
then nuclear proliferation is the worst enemy to regional security.
A further reason why arms proliferation became a major issue ex post was that the
discussion concerning how to avoid a similar conflict in the future meant to look at the
origins of this one. Embarrassingly, the Iraqi power that required such an enormous
coalition to be destroyed was constructed by the destroyers themselves (see Table 10.1).67
This is not limited to conventional weapons. One of Saddam Hussein’s power
resources was his credible threat to use chemical weapons. This is part of a long-standing
Iraqi programme to develop ABC capacities. The programme took a double turn after the
destruction of the Osirak complex in 1981 (for the initial nuclear programme, see
Table 10.2). On the one hand, Irak was looking for the so-called A-bomb of the poor,
chemical weapons. The US, France and Italy were cautious. By 1983/84, the CIA
informed the German government that a German firm Karl Kolb had constructed an
industry for chemical weapons in Samarra, Iraq that have been used in the First Gulf War.
In 1985, a Swiss audit confirmed that the site could only be used for chemical gas production.68 Between 1983 and 1987, 59 German firms were either directly or indirectly
involved in the production, officially declared to be for pesticides. In 1984, the firm
Rhema-Labortechnik, for instance, delivered 2 gas-chambers, specially enlarged to host
6 dogs (beagles) which react similarly to human beings on lethal gas. Pesticides? The
65
George Joffe, “Middle Eastern Views of the Gulf Conflict and its Aftermath”, pp. 198-99.
Alain Gresh, “Regain d’activisme dans le Golfe”, p. 3.
67
Elisabeth Picard, “Les ventes d’armes à l’Irak: une simple question d’argent”, Le Monde diplomatique,
vol. 37, no. 438 (septembre 1990), p. 15.
68
Wolfgang Hoffmann, “Die große Heuchelei”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 5 (25-31 January 1991).
66
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Table 10.1 Arms sales to Iraq
1970-1989
(In million US$
of 1985)
USSR . . . . . . .
France . . . . . .
China . . . . . . .
Brazil . . . . . . .
Egypt . . . . . . .
Czechoslovakia
Other countries
TOTAL .
19
5
1
1
1
237
538
664
121
108
703
2 166
31 537
1980-1989
(in
percentage)
61
18
5
4
4
2
6
100
(In million US$
of 1985)
13
5
1
1
1
396
054
664
121
108
614
2 116
25 073
(in
percentage)
53
20
7
4
4
2
10
100
Source: SIPRI, Stockholm, 8/1990
This is based on orders, not on actual payments. Irak owes 25 billion FF to France and 3,7 billion
roubles to the USSR.
produced gases were neurotoxic, including Zyklon B. The German journalist Egmont Koch
holds that toxic gases were tried out on human prisoners to see if the new mix Zyklon BTabun was working through the gas-mask. The prisoners died after a few minutes. By
1987, construction was finished. The annual production was between 4000 and 15000 tons
of chemical weapons. The new mix was tried out on a Kurdish village Halabja in March
1988. 5000 deaths were reported.69
Concomitantly, since the Israeli attack in 1981, the Iraqi government has tried to
produce an A-bomb of the Hiroshima type, i.e. not based on plutonium, but on uranium
enriched to 90% of its isotop 235. The production does not require a reactor, but gascentrifuges. German firms were providing the technology, exporting (illegally, but barely
controlled) gas-centrifuges to produce enriched Uranium, as well as mobile laboratories
(installed on trucks) for micro- and toxicobiological experiments (B-weapons).70 During
a UN inspection at the beginning of 1992, Iraq declared that German firms provided
material for centrifuges that allowed an annual production of around 75-100 killogrammes
of enriched Uranium, i.e. around 4 atomic bombs a year. A Yugoslavian firm was responsible for the enrichment technology at Tarmiya, 45 kilometres Northeast of Baghdad. Iraq
itself produced 119 tons of Uranium-ore, bought another 422 tons in Brazil, Portugal,
Niger, Italy and Germany. It got enriched Uranium from the USSR and France for
69
Annette Levy-Willard, “La filière allemande des gaz mortels irakiens”, Liberation, 26-27 Janvier 1991,
pp. 5-6.
70
Wolfgang Hoffmann, “Irak, Irak und nochmals Irak”, Die Zeit, vol. 47, no. 10 (28 February-6 March
1992), p. 26.
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Table 10.2. International collaboration for the Iraqi plutonium (Nagasaki-) bomb
1957: The Baghdad-Pact decided to
construct a nuclear research centre in Iraq.
This nuclear development policy was part
of the Western concept “Atoms for Peace”,
elaborated in 1953 by the Eisenhower
administration with which Third World
countries were given nuclear know-how to
make them less attracted by World communism. This project was not realised,
because of the coup against (pro-Western)
King Feisal. General Quassam opened
toward the USSR and got Soviet “Atoms
for Peace”.
1967: The Soviet nuclear research
plant close to Tuwaitha started to work in
1967. The USSR did, however, not provide
a dual-use plant of the Tschernobyl-type.
1974: The Iraqi-French cooperation
started in 1974 when Premier Chirac
signed with the Iraqi government a nuclear
cooperation treaty. In 1976, it was decided
to produce a reactor-type (Osiris) used in
France to test the resistance of different
materials exposed to radiation, i.e. for an
independent nuclear plant production. Yet,
it had the double advantage of producing
Plutonium (although in small quantities)
and to allow this to remain hidden: the
material exposed to radiation that was used
to “breed” Plutonium could be quickly
removed and stored outside the complex.
The International Atom Energy Agency
(IAEA) which is supposed to control that
no civil nuclear plant is used to “breed”
Plutonium arrived only twice a year, sev
eral weeks preannounced and could control
only those rooms where radioactive
elements have been signalled. This easy
camouflage of Plutonium production might
have been the reason why Iraq decided for
this reactor-type. This allows a production
of 16-24 killogrammes Plutonium a year,
enough for 3-4 A-bombs of the Plutonium
(Nagasaki)-type.
1980s: From this point onwards, Iraq
tried to buy the whole nuclear cycle.
“Breeding” material was bought from the
German firm Nukem, a plant for the chemical separation of Plutonium from the radiated Uran, from the Italian Snia-Technint
following a Iraqi-Italian nuclear cooperation accord. Then, at the beginning of the
1980s, an Italian firm sent a small plant
for the production of such “breeding”
elements. Finally, the French gave a plant
for the treatment of nuclear waste. Now,
Iraq could buy natural Uranium on the
international market, produce the breeding
elements, radiate them in the reactor, separate the Plutonium, and handle the
nuclear waste — all on their own.
7 June 1981: Some months before the
official starting of the whole complex,
Israel attacked Osiraq (Tammuz) which did
not destroy the centre of the reactor.
All this was well known by the beginning
of the 1980s and made public by Hearings
of Roger Richter, inspector of the IAEA,
to the US Senate in 1981.
Source: Roland Kollert, “Wie der Irak an der Bombe baute” (How Iraq built the bomb), Die Zeit,
vol. 46, no. 7 (8-14 February 1991), pp. 15-17. The author is physicist and consultant for the
“enquete-commission” of the German Parliament on “Future Nuclear energy policy”.
purposes of “research”.71
Once the technology to produce ABC weapons was acquired, Iraq needed the
launching supports. Once again, German know-how for missiles has reached Iraq via the
former German-Argentinean cooperation and directly via Switzerland and Egypt. Until
71
Udo Ulfkotte, “Offiziell wahrt Bagdad Stillschweigen über das Atomprogramm”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 January 1992, pp. 1-2.
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Table 10.3. Iraqi weapon and finance channels
Matrix Churchill, a firm near Coventry,
was the central node in the international
system of weapons-gathering. With the
end of the first Gulf war, the British government, pushed by its Ministry of Commerce and against the wishes of the
Foreign Office, did not block, but even
encouraged exports known to be used for
the construction of weapon systems. British intelligence found out in October 1988
that Iraq was building a super-gun. Yet,
the export-licenses were not repelled. The
firm was sold 1987 to a cover firm, whose
general director was to become Safa alHabobi, a senior official of the Iraqi Ministry for industrial and military production.
The deals were going on, because UK
intelligence used the Matrix Churchill to
gather information about the Iraqi rearmamament.
On 4 August 1989, the FBI found out
that the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro,
Branch Atlanta, had channelled illegal
credits of $US 5 billion to firms part of
the Iraqi weapon providing system Iraq
between 1985 and 1989 (although yet
officially denied, shown to be known by
the Italian centre). In October 1989, Tareq
Aziz complained about this to Secretary of
State James Baker. In November a $US 1
billion credit guarantee for wheat exports
was given to Iraq. The chairman of the
Bank Committee of the House of Representatives, Henry Gonzalez, found out in
1990 that not only the Bush administration
knew about the super-gun project, but that
it had given export licenses for Gerald
Bull’s space-research firm that allowed the
latter to trade with places known to the
CIA for being Iraqi military bases.
Sources: “Die Werkzeuge des Schlächters” (“The instruments of the slaughterman”, initially published
by the Sunday Times), Die Zeit, vol. 48, no. 49 (27 November-3 December 1992), pp. 13-16; Joe Stark,
“L’‘Irakgate’, ou le cynisme-roi”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 40, no. 467 (février 1993), p. 7; Alan
Friedman, “Dollars für den Diktator” (“Dollars for the dictator”), Die Zeit, vol. 48, no. 49 (27
November-3 December 1992), p. 14.
now, civil missile industries can export without official agreement by the German Ministry
of Economics.72 Yet, the major link has been found in an intricate link between the US
branch of an Italian bank and a UK firm (see Table 10.3). It seems that US, Italian, and
British authorities used Matrix, BNL and other firms for foreign military links with
Irak.73
Now, one could say, this is old stuff. Burned fingers avoid fire. The US and other will
not produce a system wrecked by arms-deals. At the beginning of the crisis, analysts were
quite confident that the current crisis would eventually cause the international community
to consider seriously the need for sharp limitations on arms sales to the states of the Gulf
area and perhaps the Middle East as a whole. Others were more cautious and anticipated
or legimitated an arms race. Consequently, at least one observer argues for rearmament
as a way to preserve a regional balance of power policy (against Iraq), even though
72
73
Wolfgang Hoffmann, “Die große Heuchelei”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 5 (25-31 January 1991).
Joe Stark, “L’ Irakgate’, ou le cynisme-roi”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 40, no. 467 (février 1993),
p. 7.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
regional arms-control then becomes more difficult. For Kemp, the vicious circles of
insecurity/arms race that makes a peace treaty illusionary and the lack of a regional peace
for making insecurity/arms race unavoidable.74 This is a typical power-centred position.75
Yet, despite warnings, after the conflict, proliferation came up, because the US needed
to arm its allies. True, proliferation cannot distinguish between today’s friends and
tomorrow’s foes. All the calculations of balances become useless. Since the Gulf states
will never be strong enough to sustain aggressive policies, the US can take sides and build
a regional security system around forward deterrence. Sweeping concerns about
proliferation aside, the arms sales and orders to the Middle East have massively increased
during and since the end of the conflict.76
Thus, the Bush administration quickly forgot all the gratifying speeches made during
the conflict. The US Export-Import Bank which guarantees loans (linked to US sales) had
a policy of not underwriting arms sales to developing countries since 1968. Yet, Congress
opened the door in 1990 by allowing a $US 1.2 billion guarantee for the sale of military
helicopters to Turkey. The Bush administration has asked for another $US 1 billion to
finance overseas sales of military hardware.77
Facing a dramatic drop in arms sales in 1991 of around 40%, that is from $US 41.1
billion in 1990 to $US 24.7 billion in 1991, the US and other producers lobby to sell
abroad — in particular since their own governments are cutting arms expenditure. The
Middle East remains the first address. Saudi Arabia, the biggest US customer, spent $US
5.6 billion, i.e. around 40% of total US sales in the Middle East ($US 12 billion) —
which is more than the total Soviet arms sales ($US 5 billion). US arms sales to the third
world rose to a record $US 18.2 billion in 1990, partly because of large contracts signed
with Saudi-Arabia after the invasion of Kuwait. Sales fell by 22% in 1991 to $US 14.2
billion. From 1988 and 1991, the US accounted for half of all arms sales to the Middle
East: $US 36.5 billion out of a total of $US 73 billion. Those sales accounted for 72-75%
of the value of all weapons the United States sold to the third world during that period.78
On 14 September 1990, the US had agreed to the largest weapons deal in history with
Saudi Arabia: $US 20 billion over several years (in two tranches, of which the first of
$US 7.3 billion as emergency has already been delivered) including advanced tanks and
74
Geoffrey Kemp, “The Gulf Crisis: diplomacy or force?”, p. 517.
After the conflict, he devised a possible moratorium on certain armaments including a freeze on all
surface-to-surface missile transfers to the region and argued for confidence-building measures between Israel
and its Arab neighbours. See Geoffrey Kemp, “The Middle East arms race: can it be controlled?”, Middle East
Journal, vol. 45, no. 3 (Summer 1991), pp. 441-56.
76
Some concern has been retained for ABC weapon systems with President Bush’s Executive Order No.
12375 which limits the spread of chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles.
77
Congressional Quarterly, 7 December 1991, p. 89.
78
Robert Pear, “U.S. Sales of Arms to the Third World Declined by 22% Last Year”, The New York
Times, 21 July 1992.
75
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Table 10.4 Conventional weapons ordered by Middle Eastern countries in 1991
Buyer
Seller
Designation
Bahrain
Egypt
USA
CSFR
USA
Iran
Israel
CSFR
FRG
AH-64 Apache
L-59
F-16C
AGM-65D
AGM-65G
T-55
BRDM-2
TPz-1
Dolphin
Patriot battery
MIM-104 Patriot
F-15A Eagle
AIM-9M
Patriot battery
MIM-104 Patriot
M-60-A3
V-300 Commando
G-5 155mm
AIM-7M Sparrow
M-113-A2
M-548
M-578
Patriot Battery
MIM-104 PAC-2
HMMWV
T-72
Scud-C Launcher
Scud-C
AH-64 Apache
Agm-144A
NL
USA
Oman
USA
Qatar
Saudi
Arabia
RSA
USA
Syria
CSFR
NKor
UAE
USA
Number
ordered
8
48
46
40
40
300
50
8
2
1
32
10
300
1
64
119
12
770
207
50
43
14
758
2300
300
20
620
Description
Helicopter
Jet Trainer
Fighter
Air-to-surface missile
Air-to-surface missile
Main battle tank
Scout car
APC
Submarine
SAM system
Surface-to-air missile
Fighter
Air-to-air missile
SAM system
Surface-to-air missile
Main battle tank
APC
Towed howitzer
Air-to-air missile
APC
APC
Recovery vehicle
SAM system
Surface-to-air missile
Light vehicle
Main battle tank
SSM launcher
SSM
Helicopter
Air-to-surface missile
Number
delivered
50
8
1
32
27
12
20
100
-
Source: SIPRI, 1992
armoured vehicles, trucks, Patriot ground-to-air missiles, Apache anti-tank helicopters, new
airfields, barracks and other support structures. It could be called “the defense industry
relief act 1990”.79 At the beginning of January, the administration decided to delay the
remaining tranche of 13-14 billion until after the war — due to pro-Israeli lobbying.80
In March 1991, the Saudi arms purchase request was put on hold to sort out the financing
79
Eric Schmitt, “U.S. to Sell Saudis $20 Billions in Arms; Weapons Deal is Largest in History”, The New
York Times, 15 September 1990, p. A5.
80
Eric Schmitt, “$13 Billion Weapons Sale To Saudis Will Be Delayed”, The New York Times, 5 January
1991, p. 5.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
after the war. With the hindsight of today, it is not sure if the orders will be fulfilled (see
Table 10.4). But at least the US has reversed the trend and effectively crowded out
European competitors that were increasingly encroaching on the US market share in the
Middle East. “Developments in 1991 tended to underline the predominant European view
that the net effect of the 1991 Gulf War would not be to increase the size of the global
market. Rather it would be to restore the strong dominance over the arms market that the
US enjoyed prior to late 1970s.”81
That exports did not stop at conventional weapons that could pose major troubles in
future conflicts is shown by the permissive decisions of the Bush administration with
regard to medium-range missiles. Alain Gresh quotes a Washington Post article entitled
“This is a Funny Way to Stop the Mideast Arms Race” from August 1992, which reports
the Bush administration’s final list of missile projects that US producers are not allowed
to contribute with parts or know-how in one way or another. After heavy lobbying, the
administration allowed exceptions for the Middle East: the Egyptian projects of an
improved SCUD and of Condor II; all Iraqi projects; the Israeli missiles Jericho I and II
and the satellite launcher Shavit; the improved Syrian Scuds and the missile El-Fatah; the
improved Syrian Scuds …82 In short, in the two years following the Gulf conflict, the
US got contracts totalling $US 28.5 billion in the Middle East.83
This US policy is indirectly criticised by the former director of the International
Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He says that the policy pursued since 25 years
which aims at providing security for the Gulf states by enormous arms sales, has not been
exactly stabilising. Without accord of the arms-selling countries, the security of the region
cannot be apprehended optimistically.84 In May 1992, the five biggest weapons-exporting
countries (or the five veto power of the UNSC), the US, Russia, France, the UK and
China met in Washington. After a two day conference, they could not agree on any
limitation of conventional arms exports to the Middle East. They agreed on temporary
rules for ABC weapon systems. China had for the first time given its acquiescence not to
export technology that could be used for such purposes.85
This means in conclusion that the central balance, instead of calming or “securing”
the region, relies entirely on US conventional military deterrence backed by local forces.
Those supporting it might point to the European experience where a protracted period of
deterrence has first developed a common sense of limited conflict (avoiding the nuclear
weapon) and then the breaking up of the whole system. Those arguing against it might
81
Ian Anthony, “The United States: arms exports and implications for arms production”, in Herbert Wulf
(ed.) Arms Industry Limited (SIPRI and Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 70.
82
Alain Gresh, “Regain d’activisme dans le Golfe”, p. 3, fn. 11.
83
Alain Gresh, “Regain d’activisme dans le Golfe”, p. 3.
84
“Les Etats du Golfe n’ont rien appris” (entretien avec M. François Heisbourg, directeur de l’Institut
international d’études stratégiques), Le Monde, 17 janvier 1992, p. 3.
85
For the major German newspaper, this news is worth 100 words, in: “Keine Einigung über Begrenzung
der Waffenexporte”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 June 1992, p. 5.
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note that Europe had developed a security structure including a system of confidencebuilding measures. Military deterrence, i.e. the means of containment, would not have
sufficed to create a system of greater international stability, the objective of containment.
Without the attraction and vitality of one societal project, no convergence would have
happened. Thus, relying exclusively on military deterrence and not on a regional security
structure might work if the countries of the Gulf develop a legitimated domestic and
international policy. The domestic development will be tackled later. As we have seen, in
the former section, this is certainly not the case on the international level. After the next
conflict, this story of proliferation will be repeated.
3.4. The central-regional link (II): US foreign policy in the Middle East
The policy we’re pursuing now, is one in which we want to
minimize the U.S. military presence on the ground in the region.
It’s probably easier to do if we help out friends like the Saudis
and the gulf states to have sufficient capability to be able to
defend themselves long enough for us to be able to get back.
Defence Secretary Richard Cheney,
as quoted in Patrick E. Tyler, “Cheney Wants No Limit On Arms
for Gulf Allies”, The New York Times, 20 March 1991, p. A13.
Having temporarily destroyed the military capabilities of Iraq, the US seems to have taken
on board the central aim of the Israeli deterrence strategy. This strategy consists in
preserving military-technological supremacy vis-a-vis any potential Arab challenger,
possibly also through preemptive action.86
But this preemptive action, to be successful, cannot rely solely on military deterrence.
It can, or even must, rely on linkage. In the quest for regional security, the different
subsystems, the Gulf and the Near East, appear more disarticulated than before. The
unsuccessful Iraqi attempt to link them via Arab and Palestinian propaganda, and Scuds
on Israel, as well as the disengagement of the Gulf states from the Palestinian question,
leave the US as the major actor able to play on linkage or not.
The strategy, at least officially, is to use (1) a specific linkage from the Gulf to the
Near East, namely US hegemony as sole security provider against Iran and Iraq, (2) to
start the solution of the Palestinian question, and thus dynamics in the Near East, to
stabilise, in turn, the Gulf.
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed reports that before the outbreak of the October (Yom Kippur)
War in 1973, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger spoke privately about wars that
make diplomatic moves easier. When the situation is hot, new arrangements can be forged.
Sid-Ahmed discusses the possibility that the US wanted an Israeli-Egypt conflict, so that
86
Andreas Rieck, “Der Golfkrieg als Schlüsselereignis für den arabisch-israelischen Konflikt”, Aus Politik
und Zeitgeschichte, B 7-8/91 (8 February 1991), p. 44.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
it could use its leverage on both in order to make a more enduring settlement.87 This
nearly collapsed when Egypt was advancing too much. Kissinger used the “hot” situation
to inaugurate the first Middle East Conference in Geneva under US and Soviet auspices
both to co-opt the Soviets and to separate the Egypt-Israeli question. The war gave him
the necessary resources to influence Israel, both because it invigorated the security needs
of Israel and because the US was vital for its survival. In this argument, Camp David is
the US-brokered result of the October (Yom Kippur) war. There are too many analogies
here for today’s commentators not to see a second version of Camp David in the US
attempts to broker a (Madrid) conference for a separate Israel-Syria peace — and maybe
this time for a true Palestinian solution.88
In any case, the “momentum” was to be used, the “window of opportunity” to be exploited. The US managed to impose all the preconditions posed by the Israeli government:
exclusion of the PLO and of any Palestinian delegate from Jerusalem; exclusion of the UN
from the talks; exclusion of Jerusalem for the agenda; discussion of a transitory status for
self-government in the occupied territories and not a final solution. On the other hand, the
US and Israel knew that having put so much prestige into the process, this could not end
without any result, if the future of the question and thus the legitimacy of US hegemony
was not to be seriously handicapped. Thus, the Palestinian-Israeli issue will be read as an
indicator of the power that the US acquired during the conflict. To be more precise, it will
be seen as an indicator of two US resource-translations, (1) the translation of military
dominance into diplomatic leverage, and (2) the linkage of the Gulf to the Levant.
Expectedly from the relational power-security framework, potential power relies on two
kind of linkages: both between security sectors and between security complexes. In other
words, the translation dynamics in the parallel Palestinian conflict will be a powerindicator of the feedback dynamics of the Gulf conflict.
Comment transformer la puissance en influence? Tel est le défi auquel se trouve confrontée l’Administration Bush au Moyen et au Proche-Orient au lendemain de la guerre
du Golfe.89
The initial conditions for the linkages seemed positive. On top of the above-mentioned
reasons (chapter 7) for the increased dynamics of the regional system, namely the decrease
of Soviet, now Russian, power and the reorientation of regional actors toward the remaining superpower, the outcome of the conflict has notably weakened some actors whose
anti-Israel position were well known: Syria and Saudi Arabia. The US could use that
leverage to push for peace talks. Indeed, importantly for the power-analysis, the extent to
which actors gave up long-established policy principles can be seen as an indicator of their
87
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Nach vier Kriegen im Nahen Osten. Thesen zu einer offensiven Friedenspolitik
(Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 1977), pp. 28-29, 38.
88
These are ex post rationalisations, of course. But power analysis of the encompassing rational choice
kind automatically tend toward possible overrationalisations. This will be taken up in chapter 15.
89
“Éditorial”, Politique Étrangère, vol. 56, no. 2 (Été 1991), p. 399.
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223
power once the conflict is over. Hence, analysts weigh concessions unthinkable before the
conflict with post hoc policy positions. For an economistic power-approach, the question
focuses around the result of the Madrid Conference that will decide, whether or not the
US has spent past capital to acquire a future one in the Middle East.
4. A precedent for conflict management in the “new world order”?
Bush’s new world order was said to rely (1) on the end of an ideological conflict which
makes Northern cooperation possible; (2) on the end of the rule of might which makes the
recurrence to multilateralism or at least Concert diplomacy possible. Aggression does not
stand, as he said.
The non-existence of a new world order which would have found its founding myth
in the Gulf conflict can be seen on the war’s impact on the UN and major actors on the
international scene. The basic question of the new world order appears to boil down to the
international management of US unilateralism.
4.1. The UN after the Gulf conflict
The first easy question to be handled is whether this was a multilateral war, in the sense
of collective security. Although, the UN came close to playing the role initially thought
for it — deterrence of territorial aggression, economic and military sanctions, finally
international peacekeeping operation — it could never really play it out. The US and some
of its allies prevented the UN from playing this role which was the centrepiece of Soviet
and French diplomacy.
At first, one should note the inherent limits of the deployed UN system. It was not
a full-fledged application of collective security as it is, at least theoretically, part of the
UN. The UN Charter asks for the establishment of independent UN forces and aims ideally to challenge and eventually replace states in their international monopoly of force.
Since these troops have been dead letter since 1945, the UN can according to Art. 106 of
the UN Charter decide to intervene militarily (in the sense of chapter VII), if the five
permanent members of the UN, after consultation of the other members, decide so. In the
case of the Second Gulf War, the superpowers did not even proceed this way. There was
no consensus for a military action of the UNSC. Thus, based on Art. 42, last sentence and
Art. 48, paragraph 1, they authorised a groups of states to intervene militarily. The UNSC
renounced the imposition of mechanisms that would allow a continuous control of the
military action. It could not stop them. In other words, the UNSC made a “sovereign”
decision — to leave the whole to the coalition. A blank check duly filled out by the US.
On different occasions, the coalition did not follow the spirit of the UN and the
UNSC resolutions. The list is long. The US applied the embargo with military means even
before the UNSC Resolution 665 sanctioned this action on 25 August 1990. Although the
first military troops were enough to defend Saudi Arabia, the US decided to double the
troops on 8 November 1990. Hence they became a possible offensive force. The UNSC
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Resolution 678 from 28 November 1990, the so-called ultimatum, was arguably not
exactly a war-declaring ultimatum, because it did not specify the means to be used. On
top of this, resolutions (might) need the unanimity of the veto-powers. The fact that China
was abstaining was never taken up in the following discussion. At least for one analyst,
this is, however, controversial: is only the explicit denial, or also an abstention an
expression of disagreement?90 The Security Council was not asked to pronounce on the
cease-fire agreement, not to speak of the peace.91 The UNSC Resolution that imposed
the sanctions (661 from 6 August 1990) excluded explicitly food and medicines. The afterwar blockade is not backed by the UN.92 In no UNSC resolution can any indication be
found to attack the state of Iraq in order to weaken the economic or political fabric of the
nation. If the attack on air forces, scuds and the air defence system was militarily valid,
the same cannot be said for the attacks directed against the Ministry of Justice, Ba‘ath
Party facilities; water and power supply from Northern Iraq.93
Without any control of the events, Secretary General Perez de Cuellar declared in a
largely ignored interview to Le Monde at the beginning of February 1991, that this was
“not a UN war”.94 His successor Butros Butros-Ghali made it very clear from the outset
that he was not willing to get entrapped in the same way. Cautious about the gained
importance and overburden of the UN, he tried to use the leverage to develop autonomous
UN means, much as did with French and Soviet diplomacy. Hence, during the Summer
1992, he launched the idea of a UN Rapid Deployment Force that would give the UN the
independent logistics to intervene when required. Needless to say, the French immediately
agreed to reserve 1000 soldiers of a special intervention force within 24 hours and another
1000 within a week. Boutros-Ghali declared that “if I got another 20 countries to join, I
would be in a much better position” to defend victims of aggressions.95 Therefore he
might probably never get them.
It was not a UN war, and had little to do with collective security, but more with a
traditional Concert policy. Still, some of the resolutions showed some imagination for
innovative moves. Was the Second Gulf War a precedent for international peace-keeping?
Some prudent optimism has been voiced in much more limited aims. Thus, the UNSC
resolution 687 which guarantees the Iraq-Kuwait border and sanctions the transgression
with international counter-measures might show how the UN can be used as a further
90
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonflikts.
Barbara Rogers, “Wanted: A New Policy for the United Nations”, in Victoria Brittain (ed.) The Gulf
Between Us. The Gulf War and Beyond (London: Virago Press), p. 146.
92
Barbara Rogers, “Wanted: A New Policy for the United Nations”, p. 147.
93
One of the major discussion at the end of the conflict concerned this traditional ius belli argument about
the proportionality of means.
94
Sandro Medici, “L’ONU e la guerra: l’inganno”, Il Manifesto, 10 February 1991, p. 2, reports that the
news were either not reported or received with such incredulity, that the (anti-war) Manifesto was asked if
they did not make up the whole thing.
95
“Auf uns richten sich zu große Hoffnungen”, interview with Butros Butros-Ghali, Die Zeit, vol. 47, no.
33 (7-13 August 1992), p. 3.
91
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deterrent for border crossings. The UNSC has, furthermore, limited Iraqi B and C capacities which could presage an international interdiction of these weapons systems.96 In the
light of the power-discussion above, even this limited new role of the UN is highly
debatable. The UN has always guaranteed borders. What adds a deterrent to this guarantee
is the extraordinary military backing. In a sense the resolution justifies ex ante a US
forward defence in the Gulf. With regard to the BC weapons control, the effectiveness of
the resolution is again backed by US foreign policy, which has long fought against the Abomb of the poor. As long as nuclear weapons are excluded, it seems not to be a general
move to ban highly lethal weapon systems, but a way to use the UN system to restrict
access to the “ABC country’s club”.
The most spectacular move has, however, been the UNSC resolution 688 from 5 April
1991 which set the preconditions to intervene in favour of the Kurdish minority in
Northern Iraq. The international legal backing for the intervention is not clear. The
genocide-convention is a convention to ban domestic genocides to be sanctioned by
domestic trials and is said not to cover state-terrorism. The protocol II to the Geneva
convention from 1977 (for civil wars) cannot be imposed by a third party. The
compromise formula of these treaties is always the same: a minimum of agreed selfrestriction — or the risk of no mutual restriction. John Major’s idea of a protected zone,
which was implemented with the resolution, is not covered by these texts, if it requires
overriding Iraqi opposition.97 Consequently, the UNSC resolution cannot refer to firm
legal ground. It refers ambiguously to (1) the right of international intervention for
guaranteeing the conditions of peace (chapter VII of the Charter), as used for Desert
Shield and Desert Storm and to (2) the sovereignty of all member states. The intervention
to protect the Kuridsh minority under chapter VII represents a precedent to consider
massive human rights abuses, and not only military conflicts, to justify multilateral
intervention against a member state.98 But this remains a long-term process. The reason
it worked in Northern Iraq was not a general consensus about such a kind of intervention,
but the weakness of Iraq.
Then, finally, there might be a last way in which the feedback dynamics of the Gulf
conflict may have indirectly strengthened the multilateral regime: it could have become
an obligatory passage point for US administrations before unilaterally decided intervention.
Has the Gulf conflict started a precedence, such as to make the UN approval necessary
for US international interventions, or for assuring domestic US approval?
It is too early to judge this very limited impact. The point could be made with more
conviction if the conflict would have happened in the US sphere of influence, as for
instance in Latin America. The Middle East is a tricky security region where the US is
96
Rüdiger Wolfrum, “Die Aufgaben der Vereinten Nationen im Wandel”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte,
no. B 36/91 (30 August 1991), p. 6.
97
Robert Leicht, “Machtlos gegen Mörder? Saddam Hussein und die Ordnung der Welt: Vom geringen
Glanz und großen Elend des Völkerrechts”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 17 (19-25 April 1991), p. 3.
98
Rüdiger Wolfrum, “Die Aufgaben der Vereinten Nationen im Wandel”, pp. 6-7.
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playing off different allies, Arabs against Arabs, and Israelis against (nearly) all.
Multilateralisation either by integrating regional forces or by getting outside agreement
(and money) is not particularly new to this region. There is a fair chance to see Panama
1991 in a straight line to Iraq 1991, accommodating for local differences. US collaboration
has always been tied to the condition that it would not be a UN war, headed by UN officers. It is this condition which will be the litmus test of a change in US foreign policy.
For the domestic agreement, it is, again, not the first time that UN approval came
before domestic concertation. During the Korea war the UNSC resolution was voted the
same day of the intervention and the US had already started two days later to ship forces
to Asia. At the time, the UN could be used. Since Baker and Schewardnadse were negotiating the day of the Kuwait invasion, the US knew quite rapidly that it could rely on one
superpower to get UN backing. It is not at all sure if, in slightly less clear circumstances,
the US would gamble very much on the UN if its interests are at stake.
4.2. Whose new world order? Trilateral diplomacy after Kuwait
George Bush talked about a “new era” in his speech of 8 August, and declared officially
the “new world order” as a US foreign policy objective in his speech to the Congress on
12 September 1990. The administration’s appeal to see the Gulf conflict as the start of a
new world order meant playing out the possibilities of international cooperation that the
end of the iron curtain has opened for the major actors.
This is not the first time that a regional conflict would become the starting point for
a new world order. Already the Korean war was discussed as the first real incidence of
“collective security”. Wolfers distinguishes between an idealist version that calls for
collective intervention against an aggressor for moral reasons, and a more realist version
that rests on vital interests as represented by the so-called principle of indivisible peace:
“If aggression is to go unpunished anywhere, it is said, potential aggressors will be
encouraged everywhere, and as a result no nation will be secure”99, which reads like a
statement by Bush or Baker. Yet, the War in Korea did not imply a major shift in great
power policy. It was a venture of what Wolfers calls collective defence, to oppose what
was considered the major US enemy of the time, the USSR. The UN was only a means
for that end: “what was important in the vision of world order entertained by the Bush
administration was the leadership role America would play, not the institutional means of
exercising this role.”100
There are two incidents of US indirect power, i.e. attempts to use the precedent of a
regional war for other objectives. The first objective is the deterrence of future regional
wars, or more precisely the deterrence of regional middle powers. Since after the Cold
War, the US strategic planners have been concentrating on regional conflicts with middle
99
Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration. Essays on International Politics (Baltimore and London:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), p. 170.
100
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 41.
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powers, the same could apply again. It is thus the end of the Cold War that should be
seen as the basis for the new world order, great power conflicts being replaced by small
and middle powers challenging the US unipolarity. The change from the conflicts of low
intensity to middle intensity; the attempt to defend NATO from regional hegemons; the
control of ABC proliferation are all indications of this new focus. Since spring 1990, the
US military chiefs saw Iraq as a potential long-term threat to global US supremacy. When
Iraq bid, the US was prepared to respond and did so vigorously. The military have
interpreted the Iraq conflict in classical geopolitical terms: a hegemonic war to preempt
the rise of new challengers.101
The second indirect power attempt of the US would be to impose its leadership on
possible contenders. Denied of its role of defending the free world against communism,
and challenged on its economic competitiveness, the conflict would reinstall military
power at the high of international authority in order to cash in. The major powers of the
crisis were all major military powers. The others have to pay for it. “Belle revanche des
armes sur la finance.”102
Yet, since these indirect power attempts have been widely advertised, power approaches expect the emergence of counter-forces to oppose the US calculus.
The predictable Southern response will avoid challenging the USA with an oldfashioned across-border conflict.103 If the precedent set by this war has shown to everyone that naked aggression will provoke disastrous reaction, then, as in the Cold War, the
competition between those powers that want change the status quo and the US and at least
some of its allies, will use other channels. Wars by interposition or more generally civil
wars will be the rule, especially since multilateralisation is there much more difficult to
be obtained. In other words, guerrilla wars are much more likely to happen than before
the crisis. Being tied to the status quo as in good old containment times, the US might
have won another Korea to get entrapped in another Vietnam.104
In the north, European powers and Japan are, if the US policy is to be pursued in this
vein, likely to counteract against an increasingly perceived hegemonic racket by the US.
The thought might not be long in forming that the United States was using the centre
to order the periphery, while using the periphery (above all the Middle East) to maintain
its influence over the centre.105
Thereby not only the military, but also the oil leverage is supposed to be used by the US
to obtain advantages in other fields. With the NAFTA agreement that may eventually in-
101
Michael T. Klare, “Obiettivo Iraq. La strategia americana nella guerra del Golfo”, Il Manifesto, 17
February 1991, pp. 6-7.
102
Ghassan Salamé, “Les enjeux d’une crise”, Maghreb-Machrek (octobre-décembre 1990), p. 13.
103
Eugene J. Carroll Jr & Gene R. La Rocque,“Victory in the Desert”, p. 57.
104
Robert Hunter, “États-Unis: les dilemmes du vainqueur”, Poltiique Étrangère, vol. 56, no. 2 (Été 1991),
p. 425.
105
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 68.
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clude all Latin America, the US would control the production of oil in America and
Arabia. The US could take over OPEC for oil production, distribution and revenue distribution to be exchanged in particular with Japanese money.106
The counter-reaction takes different directions. Generally speaking, Germany and
Japan, anticipating that their burden will not diminish, try to get some control on the
foreign policy which is made with it. “No taxation, without representation.” And since the
US has been not very forthcoming, this means more independent actions. Japan, on her
side, has moved slowly toward a greater military presence. Two months after the end of
the war against Iraq, Japan announced to send a small flotilla of 4 minesweepers (500
people) to the Persian Gulf, It is the first distant Japanese military mission since World
War II.107 In a heated discussion which provoked massive popular resistance, Japan
changed the constitution to allow the sending of Japanese troops to multilateral peacekeeping abroad. To oppose its US dependence on oil production and distribution, Japan
has been trying to get direct contacts with Arab oil-producing countries. 73% of its oil is
imported from the Middle East. Despite attempts to raise the part of nuclear power and
especially liquified gas in its energy basket, Japan will remain largely dependent on oil.
Yet, it consciously changed the dependence on distribution in favour of the producing
countries and their multinational oil companies: from 44% in 1980 to 63.5% in 1989.
There exist also deals that should entrap oil producers with Japanese growth and aid
policies. The deal would be to exchange Arab production and refinery capacity for Japanese development projects in Arabia. The “majors” are increasingly marginalised.108 Finally, Japan has embarked in the most ambitious nuclear energy project of the world, aimed
at constructing the full plutonium cycle. Even a country with whom Japan has good neighbourly relations, like South Korea, has officially expressed its concern about the future
plutonium potential of Japan. A critique of nuclear energy expects that by 2020 Japan will
possess more militarily usable plutonium than the two superpowers together ever did.109
Germany, on the other hand, has been undergoing the same discussion about a change
of its constitution so as to allow the Germans to take part in “out-of-area” missions, as
106
European commentators are producing at times the most Machiavellian scenarios of US intentions. One
analysis reads as follows. The US has to honour different interests, namely the financing of their economic
and military power, the liquidation of their and the Latin American debt, the financing of Russian and Eastern
Europe, a Marshall Plan for Latin America or other parts of the world. These enormous financial needs cannot
be met by Japan or Germany. If the US would link the control of oil to the control of other primary products,
it could — via an inflationary policy — both cut the debt and put strains on those countries not producing
primary products. This could be used for getting concessions from Europe (agricultural policy, civil aircrafts,
and arms export control) or from Japan. See Jacques Capdevielle & Kenneth Courtis, “Le joker du Golfe”,
Le Monde, 9 avril 1991, p. 25.
107
Steven R. Weisman, “Breaking Tradition, Japan Sends Flotilla to Gulf”, The New York Times, 25 April
1991, p. A11.
108
Philippe Pons, “Le Japon multiplie les accords avec les pays pétroliers arabes”, Le Monde, 31 janvier
1991, pp. 31-32.
109
Chikako Yamamoto & Georg Blume, “Vorsprung durch Monju”, Die Zeit, vol. 48, no. 19 (7-13 May
1993), p. 26.
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long as they are of a multilateral nature.110 On top of this, Germany has been backing
(continental) European attempts to develop a more independent stand in diplomacy.
Although both British and German commentators acknowledge that the Gulf Conflict has
initially deepened the difference between the UK and other major European powers111,
it was a British idea backed by European foreign offices, and against US will, that has
made the single most innovative policy move in the Gulf conflict: the coalition’s intervention in Northern Iraq.112 European diplomacies, aware of their weak stand as a whole
in the Gulf conflict, might have pushed to adopt a project which includes common foreign
security policy, the Maastricht Treaty. Generally speaking, it seems that the (continental)
Europeans will follow the attempts to use the UN or other systems to circumscribe US
unilateralism. The discussion around the Yugoslavian intervention have clearly shown both
European wavering and the US caution for conflicts of a guerilla nature.
But to what extent is this attempt to impose a precedent on US foreign behaviour
useful for the “new world order”? The United States wanted to create a precedent for the
way Third World Crisis of this kind would be handled in the new world order. Yet, the
argument of the precedent does not really hold: seldom in the future will all the conditions
be united: the US being only exposed to one major crisis (not splitting its forces), the
allied payment for US intervention, strong domestic lobby in favour, and the acceptance
of US forces in the crisis area in different countries.113
On top of it, some of the alleged “lessons” which “the Gulf War” taught, can be
highly counterproductive for a reasonable world order. There is, for instance, the lesson
that wars that can only be fought by half-measures should never be entered into.114
The lesson that half measures should never be taken is not merely a prescription for
complete victory, it is a warning against engaging in wars that may fall short of
complete victory … the real meaning of that lesson is that war is an instrument of
policy only until the moment it is entered into. Thereafter it must follow a logic of its
own, a logic in which all must be subordinated to complete military victory.115
110
On 16 May 1993, the first German troops deployed outside the NATO area arrived as part of the UN
peacekeeping forces in Somalia. See “German Troops Hit Ground in Somalia”, International Herald Tribune,
17 May 1993, p. 3. In July 1994, the German Bundesverfassungsgericht finally ruled that German troops could
be part of UN missions.
111
Theo Sommer, “Nur die Logik des Krieges? Im Bombenhagel geht am Golf die Politik verschütt”, Die
Zeit, vol. 46, no. 5 (25-31 January 1991), p. 1, generally known for his pro-Atlantist positions castigates
British jingoism during the conflict, with the exception of the Guardian, Edward Heath and Denis Healey. The
Economist comes basically to the same conclusion. Higher British military resolve than on the continent is,
however, not judged jingoism. See “Back to the bulldog stuff”, The Economist, 19 January 1991, pp. 41-42.
112
Theo Sommer, “Schöne neue Welt, nur ein Traum?”, Die Zeit, vol. 46, no. 32 (2-8 August 1991), p.
4.
113
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe: nuages après la tempête”, p. 457.
114
This luxurious position to pick and choose to engage in military conflicts only if swift and total victory
can be expected is criticised by Pierre Hassner in “Plaidoyer pour les interventions ambiguës”, Commentaire,
no. 61 (Printemps 1993), pp. 7-9.
115
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 159.
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
Nor did it necessarily help non-proliferation if the conflict demonstrated that a country
should not take on the US unless it possesses nuclear weapons.116
Realist writers are furthermore concerned about the propensity to make preventive
wars which derives from the particular mix of objectives in Kuwait, namely low casualties
and speedy conflict resolution, preemptive strikes with high-accuracy weapons against
ABC proliferation.117 Finally, one counter-productive lesson could be the impression that
a US administration can go to war without ensuring prior domestic consensus: if the costs
of the war are kept modest, the consensus follows.
All these “lessons” together could provide a precedent for future US intervention,
which will not be forthcoming whenever (1) it should be really under UN command, and
(2) results are not swift and cost free. At the same time, should it happen, it will be
diplomatically uncontrollable because of (1) its tendency to preventive wars and (2) its
propensity to conceive intervention in massive terms and of absolute victory. This reads
like a nightmare for a Realist tradition that has been championing prudence and
moderation like George Kennan, for instance. It is, however, a quite logical consequence
of a policy that has been mainly concerned not to show again the “weakness of the
powerful”, as it allegedly did in Vietnam. The power-translation has been not only be the
obsession of power approaches, but also of US policy in the Gulf. On the contrary, the
power feedback dynamics such a policy has on the system is on the contrary possibly very
damaging to the “new world order.”
5. Conclusion: The inconclusive victory
A Neorealist power analysis is done in three stages: the origins, the dynamics and the
feedback of the conflict (see Figure 10.2). The Bush administration successfully converted
its power resources into actual influence (stage 2). The effects of its policy are however
much less promising (stage 3). Critiques of the administration’s policy, including Realist
writers, point out that the war has neither fundamentally stabilised the regional security
complex, nor has it provided a precedent for a rational policy to realise the US National
Interest. Two main lines of criticism can be distinguished.
Critiques of Realism point to the missed peace dividend after the end of the Cold
War. The Second Gulf War brought an era of peace in the Third World, under UN
intervention, to an end. For their work in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Iran-Iraq,
Namibia, and Nicaragua, the blue helmets got even the Nobel Prize of Peace.118 Some
would see in the Second Gulf War the attempt of the US government to undermine the
newly found credibility of the UN system. Not to wait for the sanctions to function is a
way to avoid a precedent that sanctions work. “A proven ability to enforce effective
international sanctions would be an enormous boost for the UN but extremely threatening
116
117
118
David Campbell, Politics Without Principles, p. 80.
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, pp. 113, 162.
Andre Gunder Frank, “Third World War: a political economy of the Gulf War”, p. 279.
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Figure 10.2 Stages of a Neorealist Power Analysis
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Part IV. Neorealist power analysis of the Second Gulf War
to US interests, not least in the Middle East itself. You could say that the US coalition
went to war, among other reasons, to prevent the UN becoming too effective in defending
the peace.”119 The disappointing feedback dynamics are no unintended consequence of
the administration’s obsession to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome”, but the intended attempt
to avoid a new world order based on a really multilateral system of conflict management.
But Realists also used power analysis as a critique of power politics. For Realists,
absolute victories might be good for the national ego, but the latter is seldom a good
advisor. Power is a means, but its realisation is not the end of foreign policy. The
difficulty for this Realist position has always been that on the one hand it claims to be a
strictly explanatory theory where the National Interest expressed in power is the guideline
to understand foreign policy. On the other hand, it pursues a normative aim, that the US
foreign policy should be an enlightened or long-range vision of order, anticipating the
effects on the balance of power. In one case, power inevitably expands as long as it does
not meet a comparable counterforce; in the other, it does not. This tension is easily
understood as the result of being a Realist thinker, yet loyal to his own nation that
happens to be a superpower. Stanley Hoffman’s characterisation of the US foreign policy
dilemma between “primacy or world order” has been often replayed.
Realism is torn in its opposition between an explanatory theory which makes sense
of international politics as power politics, and a normative theory which aims at a world
of limited conflict, of managed power shifts, in other words, of peaceful change. The ideal
Realist is Kissinger’s “white revolutionary”, the politician who can manage power shifts
without leaving the points of equilibrium. Born in the opposition to the appeasement
policy against Hitler, US Realism has become the cynic conscience of domestic politics,
because it has to alert the democracies of the inevitably different realm of the international
jungle. Unprepared for the power supremacy of the US, it has now to contain the unrestrained use of power for national goals, in order to establish an international system of
limited conflict. This explains why Classical Realists are to be expected among the most
eloquent critiques of major US foreign policy events (except for World War II), not only
for its alleged idealism, but for the very accumulation of power. It seems as if the Realist
statesmen (and experts) aims at a system where they can “tap” and channel the free, fluid
and constant stream of world power resources, yet knowing that this system could never
exist if international relations were just the state of war or following the law of the jungle,
as their explanatory theory presupposes.
Thus, a Realist reads the Second Gulf War as both the perfect translation of resources
into power and as the limits of perfect power politics for international security. This
tension is not only typical for the Second Gulf War. For the Realist, it ultimately cannot
be resolved; it is the very definition of international politics.
119
Barbara Rogers, “Wanted: A New Policy for the United Nations”, p. 148.
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Part V
An analysis of
governance through the
Second Gulf War
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
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Table of Content for Part V
General Introduction to Part V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Chapter 11. Assumptions of an analysis of governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Constructivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. Intersubjective practices as unit of analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. Practices (241); 2.2. Intersubjective dispositions (242)
3. The analysis of governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1. Conceptualising governance and the agent power-impersonal governance link
(246); 3.2. Two research programs (248)
237
238
240
Chapter 12. The clash of legitimation processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. The Legitimacy Problem in Changing Arab Societies: Iraq’s fuite en avant reconsidered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1. From stability to legitimacy: the shift in focus (255); 1.2. The Social Construction of Arab Political Legitimacy (258); 1.3. Conclusion (264)
2. The tacit power of the strong: effects of superpower practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. “Desperately seeking danger”: the constitution of US identity through its foreign
policy in the Gulf (265); 2.2. The governance of information (269); 2.3. The power
of silence (273)
3. Conclusion: Social contracts, whether stabilised abroad or not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
254
Chapter 13. Governance through collective memory: just war tales and the World War
II script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Symbolic Power or the ritualised mobilisation of collective memory . . . . . . . . . .
1.1. “Belief systems” and collective memory (280); 1.2. Governance through
collective memory (282); 1.3. Assessing collective memory: myth, script, symbol, and
metaphor (283); 1.4. Ritual legitimation (286); 1.5. Rituals of power, or the struggle
for truth (288)
2. The metaphorical construction of legitimate action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. Who/what “kicked” the Vietnam syndrome?, or: the Second Gulf War script as
Vietnam’s translation into World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1. “Lessons” from Vietnam (293); 3.2. The mobilisation of the US “frontier” (294);
3.3. The Hitler analogy in the World War II script (297)
4. Conclusion: A ritualised return to 1945 to overcome the … Arab Syndrome? . . . .
Chapter 14. Ritualised understanding: Realist puzzle-solving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. The silent construction of puzzles: overrationalised power translations . . . . . . . . .
1.1. US diplomacy — an invitation or a trap for Iraq? (306); 1.2. Miscalculations,
nightmare scenarios and Neorealist ex-post explanations (313)
2. The open construction of the opponent as ritualised legitimation . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. Realist “blackmails” (321); 2.2. Heterodoxy and Orthodoxy in the analysis of the
Second Gulf War (323)
3. Conclusion: Constructing the “lessons of...” debate: Kuwait against Berlin . . . . . . .
245
254
264
277
279
279
289
292
302
304
305
321
330
Guzzini, Stefano (1994), Power Analysis as a Critique of Power Politics: Understanding power and governance in the second Gulf war
European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
General Introduction to Part V
The steps of the analysis of governance do not follow as neatly the origins, dynamics and
feedback of the Neorealist power account. Indeed, the non-possibility of constructing such
a chronological story needs to be stressed. Initially, I had thought of presenting a parallel
story to the Neorealist power analysis, showing at each step of the analysis how a focus
on governance would change the story. At the start, it seemed that the two main features
of governance underlying IR analyses could be neatly fitted in: the “social construction
of options” points to the origins of an event and the very identity of its agents, whereas
“the mobilisation of bias” would lend a particular focus to the unfolding of the conflict.
A final chapter could have spelled out how Neorealist power analysis “governs” our
understanding of the war and reproduces a particular disposition to approach similar crisis
in the future. In this way, the empirical case would have focused the different underlying
power approaches all within one story. Graham Allison reapplied.
This would have brought theories together that are do not pursue the same empirical
and theoretical puzzles. This is due to the simple fact that they lack an explicit
explanatory theory of power. Neorealist power analysis offers a coherent approach exactly
because the drive for utility/power/security glues the different steps together. Since there
is no “logic of power” in approaches to governance, they will construct different stories
of the Second Gulf War, in which power/governance plays a much more modest role.
Taking practices as the unit of analysis implies that there is an analysis of governance
for every identifiable practice.1 The two main practices of concern in IR/IPE are the
practices of the international society of statesmen, and of the academic community of
IR/IPE scholars — including all the possible linkages and Kissingers. But these are by no
means the only ones. And when an empirical case such as the Second Gulf War opens up
questions about transnational militaro-industrial complexes or legitimation processes in
Arab societies, then the analysis of governance must tackle these practices on their own,
in their respective institutional dynamic. Thus, it cannot follow one chronology or a
unique line, however conceived, but must follow the time-frames of different practices.
In such an approach, what is the status of the empirical illustration? It cannot fundamentally rely on the agents’ reconstructions that construct an event (“the war”) out of the
interminable flow of things. A governance analysis will read the Second Gulf War as a
particular moment in the unfolding of practices, where they meet: there is no governance
analysis of the Second Gulf War, but an (illustrative) analysis of governance through the
Second Gulf War.
Thus, the following chapters will not try the unnecessary, and probably impossible,
namely the integration of all intersubjective power concepts into one single explanation
of the Second Gulf War. It will follow their two main origins, namely IPE and poststructuralist international theory. The first focuses on those concepts of structural power
which have been also concerned with the systematic international spill-over effects of
1
These concepts and their operationalisation for empirical research will be introduced more precisely in
chapter 11.
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DOI: 10.2870/47026
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Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
leading societies’ practices to which other practices have to react. This implies the concern
with non-intentional power as the capacity to (legitimately) export domestic problems
abroad. It is more than just unintended consequences as mere externalities, both because
it is about systematic and not only random effects and because these features make a
difference between some actors that can (are empowered) to export their problems and
others that are not. An analysis of governance will account for this feature where an
individualist concept of passive power could not. The Second Gulf War provides a
particular moment in the general unfolding of these practices.
The second, more post-structuralist, account of governance is organised around two
main axes: a genealogy of the practices of the international society of statesmen and a
semiology of the dominant discoursive practices of Neorealism. The Second Gulf War is
seen here in a deconstruction of the “naturalness” of both the practicioners’ and observers’
dispositions. In fact, Neorealist power analysis as such appears here as a privileged power
practice. It becomes the governance of the “logic of power” discourse, i.e. the way
traditional power analysis conditions our understanding of contemporary history and
reproduces particular political and normative dispositions.
After the presentation of the assumptions of an analysis of governance (11), this part
will tackle IPE’s focus on the tacit power of the strong through clashes of legitimation
processes (12) and the post-structuralist2 concern about the ritualised mobilisation of bias
in the Second Gulf War (13), and in its analysis (14).
With regard to the understanding of the Second Gulf War, the analysis of governance
will advance the following three basic theses. First, it will take off where the Neorealist
security account of the origins of the conflict stopped, namely at the understanding of
Iraq’s domestic legitimacy problems. It will be argued that the expansion of Western statebuilding practices systematically unbalance legitimacy processes in the Arab world. Iraq’s
fuite en avant is only the last unsuccessful adaptation in a long series. Second, it will
show how symbols evoked particular dispositions, made available by a shared collective
memory, for the understanding of the Second Gulf War as an anti-appeasement crusade,
and for US intransigence during the conflict. Third, having shown how Realist argumentative logic constructs our historical reading of the war, it will be argued, that this Realist
puzzle-solving, whether wittingly or not, in fact disciplined our understanding, and thus
the effect, of Berlin 1989. In this analysis of governance, the Second Gulf War appears
not as a “defining moment”, but its interpretation acts as the closing stage of the Realist
and IR puzzlement with international affairs after the sudden demise of the Cold War.
2
There is plethora of concepts which refer to non-positivist positions, as critical, constructivist, poststructuralist, and post-modern. “Critical” will be applied only to Frankfurt-School inspired approaches.
“Constructivism” will be limited to its epistemological position. “Post-modernism” will be linked to a
particular philosophical school which is based on a radical critique of the enlightenment project. For the
purpose of the analysis of governance, “post-structuralist” seems the best term, because it is both broad
enough to embrace the others, yet focuses on social theory that tried to avoid the pitfalls of both
methodological individualism and objectified structuralism. Therefore, following this definition, Habermas,
Giddens, Bourdieu and Foucault are all post-structuralist, although only the latter is (at times) post-modern.
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Assumptions of an analysis of governance
Although different in many respects, “structural power” and related concepts share several
features.
Firstly, similarly to Baldwin’s relational power, they all try to contextualise the
analysis of power. A focus on bargaining or on more militant showdowns is considered
insufficient to explain outcomes. Contextualisation can mean the particular historical
setting, the particular structures, and the particular discourses within which the action is
perceived (by the participants) and analysed (by the observer).
This implies secondly a common attempt to look at systematic effects, whether they
were consciously produced or not, whether they were retracable to a particular agent or
not. The focus of the analysis are “practices”, which can be reproduced by structures,
networks or discourses. These “units of analysis” are the crucial and delicate point for the
empirical analysis.
Thirdly, they all share the endeavour to widen the scope of what is “international
politics”. This is closely linked to the practical purposes of the concept of power, as
Morriss analyses it. Traditionally, international politics is centered around the behaviour
of states. True, MNCs and international organizations, as well as norms or regimes can
be integrated, but the eventual outcome to be explained remains the behaviour of states,
their conflict or cooperation.1 All conceptual innovations around power share the attempt
to bring to the forefront and “politicize” international practices usually considered outside
the range of the discipline.2 Shifting the conception of the international realm from
1
For an account that integrates these features in a redefined “liberal” international theory, see Andrew
Moravcsik, “Liberalism and International Relations Theory” (Cambridge: Harvard University. The Center for
International Affairs, Working Paper No. 92-6, revised April 1993).
2
Mark Hoffman precisely summarises different “critical” international theory by the attempt to redefine
“political space”. See Mark Hoffman, “Restructuring, Reconstruction, Reinscription, Rearticulation: Four
Voices in Critical International Theory”, Millennium, vol. 20, no. 2 (1991), p. 170.
237
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Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
“anarchical society” to interlinking networks or practices that are organised transsocietally,
implies the increase of the relevant actions that are to be taken as political. When Susan
Strange is castigates the emerging discipline of IPE for its focus on the “Politics of
International Economic Relations”3, it is not because it is too concentrated on politics, but
because it confuses international politics with the realm of government competences. Quite
to the contrary, if power includes non-intentional and impersonal effects, if politics is to
be understood as all those, also diffused, practices that affect significantly the public realm
(which includes, but is not limited to the government), then the concept of governance
implies another view of world politics whose relevant practices are not only those of the
“international society” even widely conceived.4
Finally, most of them share certain meta-theoretical positions which are part of the
post-positivist moment in IR (see Part II). This implies that the resulting analysis will in
fact be less theoretical than the Neorealist one, if one understands theory as causal modelbuilding. It requires, however, a refinement of the conceptual tools, more historical
sociology and more meta-theorety. After all, Foucault himself described his work as
epistmologically-informed history.
The assumptions underlying the analysis of governance will be presented by starting
with some conceptual remarks, followed by their methodological implications which will
prepare the outline of the subsequent analysis of governance in the Second Gulf War.
1. Constructivism
We construct worlds we know in a world we do not.
Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making, p. 38.
Part II has given some indications of the epistemological assumptions of those scholars
that are trying to develop a “post-positivist” research programme. There are a multiplicity
of underlying meta-theoretical assumptions within this research programme. I have chosen
the one which is most acceptable to most positions, but it cannot, and need not to, claim
to cover all of them. It must, however, claim to be coherent with the underlying
assumptions of the analysis of governance presented in Part III.
This position is called constructivism. It occupies a territory in-between empiricism
and pure idealism. It does not deny the existence of a phenomenal world, externally to
thought, but, and this is something different, that phenomena could constitute themselves
as objects independently of discursive practices. Their thought-independent existence is
not challenged, but their theory or discourse-independent observation is. What counts as
an object or an event, is always the result of interpretive construction of the world out
3
Susan Strange, States and Markets. An Introduction to International Political Economy (New York:
Blackwell, 1988), pp. 12ff.
4
Put in another way: if Realism has been based on a liberal private/public distinction, where private
pluralism was accepted domestically, but not in the public international realm, the blurring of sovereignty/anarchy implies the redefitinion of the established private/public borders, thus, of international politics.
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there. Even if there were thought-independent features of the real world, we have no way
of distinguishing them.5
Thus, constructivism recalls against positivism, that observation and knowledge is no
passive recording, but that objects of knowledge are constructed.6 At the same time it
would oppose idealismon the grounds that the principles of knowledge construction are
not random, but socially constituted through established practices.7
This implies that a theory of action must be coupled with a theory of knowledge. Both
can be analytically distinguished as two different practices, but cannot be separated.
Whereas a positivist approach, as for instance rational choice, would presuppose no major
rift between the reasoning of an agent and its reconstruction by the observer, a constructivist approach will assume that observation is always done within the reference of the
observer’s practice: its substitution with the agent must be problematised. Thus, in contrast
with positivism, it does not assume the exchangeability of observer and agent, except as
a (re)construction, whose truth content cannot, in turn, be checked via falsification against
an empirical world, because our access to that world is socially constructed.
With regard to the analysis of power, this implies that its analysis must always refer
to the two levels of action and of knowledge production. The empirical analysis always
deploys a double articulation: understanding, i.e. reconstructing, the particular event or
moment in time, and explanation which is done within the context of an audience, in this
case, the academic community. This is the double hermenutical position: meaning is
attributed with regard to the “field” on the level of action (say, Realist Power Politics in
the Gulf War) and to the “field” of academia (IR/IPE scholars).
On the level of action, there is still a difference to be made between the “natural” and
the “social” world to the extent that power as the capacity to effect could theoretically
include the “power” of hurricanes. This has been disregarded here.8 It would be part of
a power analysis only on the level of observation, that is the effects that a particular
understanding of the “hurricane” could bring about, as for instance, a sign of God.
On the level of observation, constructivism opens up for the analysis of the social
production of knowledge. If observation is theory-dependent and constructed, a constructivist approach to power must integrate a theory about the effect of theory, which, by
contributing to the construction of a particular, “authorised” view of the world, is part of
making that world.
5
Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making. Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations
(Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 37-38.
6
In the following, I will often use the phrase “action and perception” to reduce the heavy metatheoretical
terminology. It should, however, not imply that perception is a passive registration. For constructivists, perception is already the result of the constitution and interpretation of an object. Within an established practice, the
common sense makes it impossible to distinguish between the perception of an object and the “objectivation”
through perceptual acts.
7
Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique (Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1980), p. 87.
8
I would limit “power” to the social world. But even this is arbitrary as the English use for “power” as
(electric) energy shows.
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Dans la lutte pour l’imposition de la vision légitime, où la science elle-même est
inévitablement engagée, les agents détiennent un pouvoir proportionné à leur capital
symbolique, c’est-à-dire à la reconnaissance qu’ils reçoivent d’un groupe: l’autorité qui
fonde l’efficacité performative du discours est un percipi, un être connu et reconnu, qui
permet d’imposer un percipere, ou, mieux, de s’imposer comme imposant officiellement,
c’est-à-dire à la face de tous et au nom de tous, le consensus sur le sens du monde
social qui fonde le sens commun.9
Thus, the repeated reference to the reconstructions of the observers is not to privilege this
part of the social world over the agent-level: it is just that the production of “authoritative” or “legitimate” knowledge is the privileged place for a constructivist analysis of
power. It is also the reason why post-structuralist and constructivist writers repeatedly
challengie Neorealism at the meta-theoretical level. Since power exists at the epistemological level, positivism with its claim to unravel “natural” or “objective” causes and
regularities, is immediately perceived as the ultimate power strategy: it conceals that these
“objective” facts are just an effect of a social construction and that therefore particular
politics are no outgrowth of natural necessity, but of convention, even if it is one hard to
change. Indeed, the repetition of the positivist message can be seen as contributing to the
reproduction of these conventions and their “objective” appearence. By limiting power to
the level of action, positivism underplays power in the construction of knowledge.
Studying power on the level of empirical rational choices does not touch power
phenomena in the very social construction of the “empirical” both in the reified concepts
of social theories and in the actions of the observer.
Thus, the research programme of governance is not only about power, but must, given
its constructivist assumption, itself be conceived as a power practice, as much as other
theories. Before turning to the “facts” of the Second Gulf War, future historians will use
these critical self-descriptions as the necessary contextualisation for understanding the
identification of the “facts”, the fads and fashions of contemporary social sciences —
including those “critical” self-descriptions.
2. Intersubjective practices as unit of analysis
Chapter 6 proposed a power analysis with a dyad of concepts, power and governance, in
order to avoid some of the fallacies of structural power concepts without losing their
explanatory potential to integrate non-intentional and impersonal effecting. A dyadic
analysis is united by the search for capacities to effect, whereby power as a concept linked
to the agent refers to the capacity to transform resources that affect social interaction and
governance refers to the capacity of intersubjective practices to create and mobilise
dispositions. Since an economistic approach to power analysis analysis must conceive of
unintended effects as random and of impersonal effects as objective constraints, a power
9
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire. L’économie des échanges linguistiques (Paris: Fayard, 1982),
pp. 100-101.
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analysis which aims at not excluding a priori these effects from power analysis must be
based on an intersubjective ontolgy which sets the frame for the analysis of agent power.
Thus, the analysis of governance relies on two central concepts, namely intersubjective
practices and dispositions.
2.1. Practices
At this point, it is crucial to specify the unit of analysis. Practices are characterised first
of all by a set of patterned interactions.10 This seems quite straightforward if one thinks
about the two particular practices which an analysis of governance in IR will typically
touch, the international society of statesmen and the community of IR academics, or in
other words, the practioners and observer-practioners of international politics.
A second ingredient is the presence of a shared system of meaning, i.e. “communityshared background understandings, skills and practical predispositions without which it
would be impossible to interpret action, assign meaning, legitimate practices, empower
agents, and constitute a differentiated, highly structured social reality.”11 This is already
more difficult to ascertain. Common wisdom in IR is that there exists no international
community worth its name. In an interesting move, Richard Ashley has argued that there
exists an international community, namely the statesmen that share the Realist system of
meaning. This practice is based upon a code which Ashley calls the “double move”. Here
the Western political community is constructed as an ideal whose realization beyond
domestic community, however, must be deferred. The effect of this double move consists
in constituting the space and subjectivity of a relatively autonomous field of international
political practice and defines the competent subjects as those “who not only share an
abiding commitment to the Western rationalist tradition embodied in the national community but also know themselves and define their interests in terms of their locus at the
historical margins of a rationalist order.”12 Looking outward from this margin, the competent stateman defends the domestic community as a field of reason. Looking inward, he
guards against the anti-historical universalism present in domestic society’s rationalist
commitments and permanently checks undue transfers of the domestic order’s actions and
perceptions to the qualitatively different international realm. “Himself a product of these
rituals, the competent statesman is habitually disposed to resist those pressures, from
whatever national locus they might spring, that would diminish the space of international
community and reduce statesmanship to a mere projection of domestic society’s rationalist
demands. Herein is the statesman’s interest…”13
10
This is shared by the transnationalist literature. For the concept of “Handlungszusammenhänge”, see
Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Internationale Politik. Ein Konfliktmodell (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh, 1981).
11
Richard K. Ashley, “The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward a Critical Social Theory of
International Politics”, Alternatives, vol. XII, no. 4 (October 1987), p. 403.
12
Richard K. Ashley, “The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space”, p. 418.
13
Richard K. Ashley, “The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space”, p. 419.
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One can therefore often approach the working of this practice in the reaction of its
competent members to defend established meanings and dispositions. Part II has already
presented some of the defensive dynamics of the academic practice of IR/IPE. Here, I will
illustrate this point with regard to the foreign policy practice.
The importance that later writers in IR have attached to the period before and after
the Congress of Vienna can be understood as an attempt to rescue practices which have
come to be considered as most stabilising for international affairs. A consistent part of the
post-WW II writings in IR are in fact devoted to understanding and to reproducing this
diplomatic culture. This is sometimes coupled with a critique of modern diplomacy that
has lost its independence from domestic politics, a critique of its democratisation, as it
were. Others say that the advent of the nuclear bomb has produced pressure on foreign
policy elites to “socialise” their behaviour, “thus establishing an effective international
aristocracy.”14 Similarly, the very idea that foreign policy has to follow different rules
than domestic ones, and the careful socialisation procedures of the foreign policy staff in
special training programs are indicators of an autonomous network aiming at a shared
system of meaning. Kissinger’s foreign policy project, that is, the attempt to socialise
“revolutionary powers” into the common language and practices of “legitimate”
diplomacy, is the political translation and extension of this concern. Revolutionary orders
are characterised by the fact that at least one country perceives the order as oppressive.
In such an environment, “[d]iplomats can still meet but they cannot persuade, for they
have ceased to speak the same language.”15 The diplomatic culture is thus, for Kissinger,
not only the basis for conflict limitation, but its creation and reproduction becomes the
very aim of foreign policy.16
This explicit struggle to socialise actors into the diplomatic culture can be seen as a
form of a direct power exercise. Yet, the discursively constructed rules of the practice are
imbued with the dispositions of the shared system of meaning which are naturalised.17
2.2. Intersubjective dispositions
Governance has been defined as practices’ capacity to create and mobilise dispositions.
The meaning of an intersubjective disposition and its exact link to the practices needs now
to be understood.
Although Bourdieu is certainly not the only sociologist who has tried to conceptualise
intersubjective practices, his approach has the advantage of being explicitly linked to
14
John W. Burton, International Relations: A General Theory (London et al.: Cambridge University Press,
1965), p. 156.
15
Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored, p. 2.
16
Self-avowedly, this is all what Realist foreign policy can do. It is not as little as it first seems.
17
Therefore also the astonishing affinity of post-structuralist with Classical Realist writers. See also Ole
Wæver, “International Society — Theoretical Promises Unfulfilled?”, Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 27, no.
1, in particular pp. 107-111.
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power concerns. Let us take it as an illustration of how to understand the dispositional
concept of governance (see also Figure 11.1).
The starting point is the relationship between structure and field (champ). In Bourdieu,
structure is conceived as the product of collective history. Being interested in (domestic)
social systems, it is a concept linked to the system of “social difference” or stratification,
or, in other words, the generative context for the establishment of status groups. Of
course, these structures are posited by the observer’s practices. Bourdieu follows here the
anti-empiricist line of both logical positivists and constructivists. But it is the concept that
comes closest to the idea of “objective” regularities. They are the given context within
which fields (champs) establish themselves. Fields (champs) are the specific contexts
within which practices take place. Fields have a system of meaning which are build on
taken for granted beliefs, the already mentioned doxa (see chapter 6), which Bourdieu
defines also as the presuppositions of the field (champ).
Practices, in turn, are based on a field-specific set of dispositions, called the habitus.
Produit de l’histoire, l’habitus produit des pratiques, individuelles et collectives, donc
de l’histoire, conformément aux schèmes engendrés par l’histoire; il assure la présence
active des expériences passées qui, déposées en chaque organisme sous la forme de
schèmes de perception, de pensée et d’action, tendent, plus sûrement que toutes les
règels formelles et toutes les normes explicites, à garantir la conformité des pratiques
et leur constance à travers le temps.18
The habitus functions like the materialisation of the collective memory. Comparable to
Kuhn’s “paradigm”, it is a given disposition to act, perceive and think in a particular way.
Yet, it is neither immutable, nor stable. It is just a more sociological translation of
socialisation processes that take place not only on the individual level, but which
characterise entire groups.19
The logic of the field also implies that the dispositions are not themselves perceived
as the result of a particular history; they are, as Bourdieu says, the “forgetting of history
that history produces”, or, in other words, collective memory that appears as the “natural”
way of doing, perceiving and thinking things. Dispositions aim at the smooth reproduction
of exactly those assumptions that define the autonomy of the field. This ‘drive/direction’
is Bourdieu’s sens pratique. When agents are born within or into the field, so to speak20,
action appears as “orchestrated without a conductor”.
18
Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique, p. 91.
Another way would be to approach subsystems that have an autonomous dynamic; in that respect also
system’s theory can be understood similarly to Bourdieu’s approach. Fields become subsystems, doxa becomes
the binary code on which the system reproduces itself, both reproduce schemes via which the environment
outside the field/subsystem is perceived, and so on. In the system-theoretical formulation, one releases this
analysis from the strong materialist basis and identifies subsystems more on the insitutionalisation of a set of
actions.
20
Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique, p. 113.
19
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Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
Figure 11.1 Synopsis of Bourdieu’s chapter 3 of Le Sens Pratique.
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Assumptions of governance
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C’est une des propriétés génériques des champs que la lutte pour l’enjeu spécifique y
dissimule la collusion objective à propos des principes de jeu; et, plus précisément,
qu’elle tend continûment à produire et à reproduire le jeu et les enjeux en reproduisant,
et d’abord chez eux seulement, l’adhésion pratique à la valeur du jeu et des enjeux qui
définit la reconnaissance de la légitimité.21
In this approach, cooperation or common action is hence not necessarily the result of
choice. Practices are (also) the result of the orientations given by the habitus. More
precisely, every act or practice is the meeting point of (1) dispositions of the habitus
specific to the field, which for the linguistic habitus includes the expressive interest, the
linguistic capacity, and the social capacity to use adequately this competence, and (2) the
structure of the field as system of sanction and of specific censures.22
Yet, fields are not there forever, and dispositions even less. As Figure 11.1 shows,
there are different steps at which the reproduction of the field can be inhibited. There is,
first, the very passage from collective memory to the schemes of thought and action.
Language is creative and even the strongest Weltanschauung cannot determine its use.
Secondly, the dispositions are realized in a context which is different from the one in
which they were formed. The bigger the difference, the greater the possibility that dispositions may change. The difference is, however, perceived again through the lenses of
the field. The meaning of an action is attributed through the existing schemes. The
reproduction is only circular if no perceived change happened. Finally, although less
analysed by Bourdieu, there are all the interferences that can exist for the fact that the
same agent is part of different fields. Here, it depends very much on the “discipline” the
field (as, for instance, an academic discipline) succeeds in imposing on its participants not
to “steal” and transpose dispositions from other fields (art, for instance). Hence, it depends
on the degree of “autism” of the field’s ability to construct a qualitative difference to
impede such overlappings.
Intersubjective dispositions that are naturalised within the logic (system of meaning)
of the field are at the root of practices. This ensemble is the unit of analysis for the study
of governance.
3. The analysis of governance
The common denominator of the analyses of governance is the unraveling of features of
the taken-for-granted practices and fields. The analysis of governance tries to make those
visible, because their tacit working is considered a feature of power. In a certain sense,
the whole undertaking is a non-individualist account of Lukes’ third dimension. The
analysis of governance must combine three levels, the emergence of fields and practices,
the interrelation between practices and the inner dynamics of practices.
21
22
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 47.
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 14.
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3.1. Conceptualising governance and the agent power-impersonal governance link
The three facets of an analysis of governance
The first facet is concerned with the historical emergence of fields. This typically evolves
around questions of the historical “longue durée” and the naturalisation of its constitution
in questions of hegemony. If we take our examples from the two main practices we are
interested in IR, this level would point to the crucial moment of the emergence of the
modern state system as the background on which modern diplomacy as a practice should
be understood. If the conditions of its emergence then are not the same now, attempts to
reduce international politics to an unchangeable diplomatic practice or to deduce
ahistorical recipes about it, will appear as possible closure moves of a field (diplomacy)
that wants to defend itself from disturbances.23 For the practice of Realist diplomacy, the
context of the Cold War appears now to have been crucial for its development. Again,
structural changes can challenge pre-established dispositions and, in turn, makes their
mobilisation visible as “purposeful” to close them off the field. That this crisis is visible
implies already that the field has difficulties in reproducing itself unchallenged.
The second facet touches on the relationship between fields, that is, the question how
the very existence and reproduction of self-sustaining networks can have an effect on
another. This includes questions of assessing the extent of communicative closure (autism)
or, on the opposite, the dependence of some practices on others to reproduce themselves.
It can also touch the question of the doxa of one field undermining the silence of the doxa
in another. Here, the functioning of a practice can be in a crisis, because its doxa has
become visible through the boundary transgressive effects of other practices; effects that
are unintended, resistant and disabling.24
The third facet touches the mobilisation and dynamic reproduction (or not) of dispositions within one field. This latter implies three steps, namely the the assessment of
existing fields and dispositions, their mobilisation in practices under particular conditions,
and the creation or reproduction of dispositions.
The governance - power link
The link between governance and agent power is made through dispositions. Whenever
the concept “disposition” arises in an intersubjective framework, it refers to dispositions
whose bearers are agents, although the significance is that they are shared by the
participants in a particular practices, and that their “enactment” is looked at from the
practices’ point of view. This does not mean that one cannot switch to the agent point of
view. If from the level of practices, governance is the practices’ capacity to create and
mobilise dispositions, from the agent level, it is best understood as their ritualised
dis/empowering to which their actions contribute, whether wittingly or not. They acquire
23
24
This is an important part of R.B.J. Walker’s research programme on sovereignty.
Richard K. Ashley, “Imposing International Purpose: Notes on a Problematic of Governance”, p. 273.
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practical competence. The practices’ reproduction cannot be adequately understood without
reference to the participants’ competent understandings and skillful deployments of
cognitively-structured practical schemes, dispositions, or rituals of power.25 That sounds
like an individualist account. Yet, the important point of an analysis of governance is not
that there are agents and structures, or that whereas individualist approaches prefer the one
as a unit of analysis, governance privileges the other. The point is that in an analysis of
governance, understanding agency presupposes understanding of the practices, in which
action takes place and is understood (by the co-agents and by the observer). Moreover,
these practices have an ontological status of their own, not reducible to individualist
action, not even over time, as the individualist solution proposes.26
By linking up governance with agent power from the agent perspective in an intersubjectivist account, there are at least three ways in which practices can dis/empower an
agent’s dispositions.
Firstly, governance analysis will touch the social construction of the identity of the
agent. This is the part of the concept of governance most inspired by Foucault. Just recall
the example about naming a state a “Third World” state (see chapter 6), which mobilises
particular dispositions and enframes the so-identified actor in a set of pre-given
understandings. The way a discourse/practice will “institute” the available roles can limit
or expand the agent’s possible or “authorised” actions and indeed makes them intelligible
to the co-agents and to the observer. One can also apprehend this idea through the concept
of legitimacy, or the systematic (dis)entitlement to act. Governance is different from
authority derived from conscious consent: it is not done by an act, but is constituted by
the daily practices.
Secondly, governance analysis will approach the social construction of “thinkable
action” for the agent defined by the first step above. This implies again a post-structuralist
concern about the “naturalisation” of institutions and the historical construction and
intersubjective reconstruction of the “taken-for-granted” or practical world. Although the
analysis inscribes agents and actions into the internal logic of discourses and practices, it
can focus on how discursive and practical dispositions are constantly “mobilised” in
action, on the level both of the observed and observing agent.
Thirdly, governance analysis can mean the systematic furthering of capacities. This
can imply the relatively obvious case that the setting up of a system channels systematically (power) resources to an actor, both by reproducing the distribution of these
resources and by reproducing the attribution of power to them. This can also be applied
to what Peter Morriss describes as “latent abilities”.27 If power is the capacity to effect
a disposition, latent power is the capacity to acquire a disposition. Having the capacity to
25
Richard K. Ashley, “The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space”, pp. 424-425.
This leads to the problem that fields define their agents. What appears as one agent on the individualist
account, say the “US administration”, is part of different fields which might identify it differently.
27
Peter Morriss, Power: A Philosophical Analysis, pp. 57-59.
26
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speak Russian is a capacity that can be effected under some conditions (for instance, not
if one is bailed). Having the (latent) capacity to acquire the capacity to speak Russian can
be effected under other conditions, as for instance, the presence or lack of a Russian
teacher. Governance as the systematic effect of practices which results in chanelling
resources to dis/activate dispositions can be applied to both.
3.2. Two research programs
Both IPE and post-structuralism have evolved around a reconceptualisation of power. It
is at this point that we split up the conceptual communalities to point to different
empirical research projects. With the three facets of an analysis of governance just
mentioned, two research programs can be delimited. Both contextualise the practices’
origins and borders (first facet). Yet, whereas the IPE research programm is more
concerned with governance between practices (second facet), post-structuralists focus more
on governance within practices (third facet).
Communicative power and the transnational IPE research programme
Karl W. Deutsch’s approach to the concept and study of power shows many affinities with
what could be called the IPE research program of governance. Deutsch approaches power
as the capacity of a person or organisation (both cybernetically understood) to impose an
extrapolation or projection of its inner structure on its environment. Power as “gross
power” should be understood as the potential capacity of a system, which acts according
to its inner program, to effect changes in its environment; “net power” being the
difference of this (potential) capacity with the potential externally-induced changes on the
inner program. Powerful are those agents that can afford not to learn.28
This research program of the interlocking of different practices has actually two sides:
(1) on the “sending side”, the just-mentioned projection of practices, but also the selfreferential reproduction of practices which has a systematic inertial effect on other
practices; and (2) on the “receiving side”, the systematic disturbance of the reproduction
of practices by others.
The focus on the “sending side”, in which the sender is often not aware of its effects,
is again informed by the theoretical discussions of the 1960s and 1970s. It evolved around
such items as (domestic and increasingly transnational) militaro-industrial complexes
which produces outside effects on the practice of diplomacy, or also the “autistic”
reproduction of the politics of deterrence, where one particular diplomatic practice
managed to close itself off from outside interferences. This last example will be used for
28
Karl W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control. 2nd rev.
ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1966), chapter 7. After these innovative communicative ideas, Deutsch
contiunues, however, by developing the concept of power along Parson’s line as a means of exchange,
analogous to money, between the political and other social subsystems.
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illustrating the approach. It is useful also for the practice it describes, namely Cold War
superpower relations. The change of this practice had been identitifed as one origin of the
conflict in the power analysis - and will later play a central role in the analysis of
governance through the Second Gulf War.
The difference between a traditional (individualist) and a communicative understanding of the dynamics of the arms race can illustrate what an analysis of governance
would look like. The explanandum, the spiral and escalation of arms race is unquestioned:
it was a qualitative arms race, characterised by expanding military research, industries and
the organisation of ever wider parts of the society with regard to its “necessities” (at least
during the Cold War). For an interactionist approach, arms race is derived from the
security dilemma which produces increasingly shorter cycles of obsolescence and an
inflation of modernisation. Given the unavoidable international anarchy, the research
programme is to study how perceptions are formed, intentions mutually understood,
systematic psychological misperceptions to be avoided.29
A communicative approach starts from the self-referential characteristic of practices.
Deterrence is an obvious case in point. Deterrence is tendentially based on “worst-case”thinking, because there is no assurance that the “other” will not use any weakness, if it
is offered. Yet, the never ending “gaps” that the deterrence discourse finds are not the
mere product of technological changes, but the result of the very premises of deterrence
practices: if one gap was left unfilled and the enemy would not use it for its advantage,
it would imply that it was not deterrence which was responsible for avoiding the conflict.
The very credibility of deterrence would be undermined. Deterrence theory survives only
via the expectation of the worst-case.30 Hence, the legitimation of its policies relies on
the mobilisation of Feindbilder, symbols that produce a strong picture of the other as an
enemy, which, in turn, influence the conflict expectations. This accentuates a tendency to
overperception of conflict potential, overreaction on events potentially signalling conflict,
and again the overdesign of the worst-case. Deterrence policies dispose for a particular
stereotyped understanding of the world which reproduces autonomously the perceptions
of threats. Thus, the arms race is not an action-reaction between perceptions/actions of
agents but the product of self-generated moments of inertia and autonomously produced
threat-perceptions.31 Escalation is less a collective action problem of individually rational
29
See the still impressive work by Robert Jervis, Perceptions and Misperceptions in International Politics
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).
30
Constructivists were attracted by the way perestroika undermined the reproduction of the Cold War
deterrence logic. The Cold War was also a “what deterrence practices made of it”. This implies, of course,
also that if worst-case thinking might be called functional to legitimacy of deterrence theories, it is not
therefore that actors “choose” to think in these terms in their own interest: dispositions (worst-case thinking)
are reproduced through the common discourse (deterrence) which is neither immutable, nor reducible to
individual choices.
31
The stress that one’s action is always a reaction on the other, and not as a self-reproduced disposition,
is politically understandable at the time. It is less clear why it should have dominated so strongly the
theoretical debate. See Dieter Senghaas, Rüstung und Militarismus (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1972), p. 59.
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agents, and more an inertial effect. Super-power relations were decreasingly the product
of their interaction and increasingly the result of the juxtaposition of their internal
dynamics.
This extreme closure (which is not necessarily the case for all practices!) has been
called “autism”32, i.e. a pattern of communication which is not only self-referential, as
practices generally are, but has an inbuilt logic which makes adaptation to the environment
extremely difficult. Expressed the other way round, when dispositions clash with the
context of their application, it is not not the dispositions, but the perception of reality that
is adapted. In our conceptualisation, this would imply that the schemes of perception
generated by intersubjective dispositions, are so dominant in the reproduction of dispositions that they cancel out even major differences between present conditions of practices
and the ones sedimented in the habitus. In cybernetics, this would be considered a learning
pathology. The analysis of governance enters when this practice can be reproduced despite
its closure, that is, for its capacity to afford not to learn and to export adaptation to other
practices.
Yet, these practices would not be enacted if there had not been the development of
social groups linked and dependent on the practices of deterrence, as politicians,
academics and military lobbyists alike. The “tacit power of the strong” should be seen in
the damages this autistic deterrence practice has produced, for instance, in terms of
resource distribution taken away from civil to military sectors, or the export of the superpower competition to other parts of the world. The target might be the enemy, but the
recipients are many more. With this communicative rereading in mind, Kissinger’s
description of superpower relations during the Cold War is even more to the point
The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way
around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other whom he assumes
to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise,
and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet, each tends to ascribe to the other
side a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course,
over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other,
not to speak of the room.33
There is another feature which is particularly important for the study of the Second Gulf
War. The more autistic the practice, the more stable the construction of the other. In the
Feindbild, the fixation is on an enemy - whoever. Its content can change quickly if only
the particular “we-them” distinction is upheld. Foreign policy practices as part of identityconstructions will be an important subsection on the Second Gulf War. The end of the
Cold War has rendered visible dispositions acquired in other times. Some of the dynamics
on the US side can be understood this way. In the next chapter, the analysis of governance
32
Dieter Senghaas, Rüstung und Militarismus, in particular pp. 38-62.
Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1979), p. 522, italics
added.
33
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focusing on the “sending side” will therefore be illustrated by the effects of identitybuilding practices in the US.
The second part of the research program, the “receiving side” is well known through
dependency theories. It was already touched in chapter 6, and does not need long
introduction here. Communicatively-conceived power would, however, mean that only
those practices/identities can be considered dependent whose reproduction is systematically
linked to the dynamics of other practices.
capitalist accumulation in dependent economies does not complete its cycle. Lacking
‘autonomous technology’—as vulgar parlance has it—and compelled therefore to utilize
imported technology, dependent capitalism is crippled … It is crippled because it lacks
a fully developed capital-goods sector. The accumulation, expansion, and self-realization
of local capital requires and depends on a dynamic component outside itself…34
This comes close to the detrimental “spin-off” effects that Galtung describes in his theory
of imperialism.35 These effects are intra-actor, and not inter-actor effects. The link with
Deutsch’s approach is exactly in the reproduction of the lack of learning capacities in
dependent societies.36
Therefore, this “tacit power of the strong” can also be understood as a non-individualist account of Friedrich’s law of anticipated reactions where the link would not be
from agent A’s (imputed) intentions to agent B’s behavior, but to one practice that systematically reacts and anticipates another practice’s sens pratique. One would leave the
initial economic formulation by dependency theorists to include all potential issues on
which practices have systematically incorporated an initially external reference. If the
(initially Western) society of statesmen might at best take into account what their fellows
do, this entire practice will be imported as given reference into other practical contexts.
There is no Arab politics which can do without the reference to Western ones, whether
approvingly or not. This inbuilt asymmetry is the object of the “tacit power of the strong”
which will be dealt with when treating the nation-building processes in Arab societies.
Power/knowledge and the poststructuralist research program of governance
The post-structuralist research programme of governance, as it is constructed here, is
concerned with practices’ capacity to mobilise and reproduce dispositions within a given
field. It has concentrated particularly on two practices, namely the international society
34
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “Associated-dependent development: theoretical and practical implications”, in Alfred Stepan (ed.), Authoritarian Brazil. Origins, Policies, and Future (New Haven, London: Yale
University Press, 1973), p. 163.
35
Johan Galtung, “A Structural Theory of Imperialism”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 8, no. 1 (1971),
pp. 86ff.
36
For a general discussion of Galtung’s concept of “structural power”, see Pekka Korhonen, The Geometry
of Power. Johan Galtung’s Conception of Power (Tampere: TAPRI Research Reports, No. 38, 1990), pp. 112155.
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of statesmen and the academic community of (Realist) IR. There are three different facets
of such an approach. One is concerned with the emergence and given logic of a field. The
second treats the capacity of the habitus to mobilise existing dispositions, be they actions
or perceptions. This refers to the idea, as often heard as only abstractly treated, of
“structures” (which here will be understood as intersubjective practices) as being enabling
and not only constraining. Finally, a post-structuralist analysis of governance will inquire
if and how those dispositions will be reproduced, or indeed, if the practices are to survive
as an autonomous set of interactions with a shared system of meaning.
The emergence of the field as a first step of this research programme returns to the
deconstruction of the standardised “origin” of international politics. It is a questioning of
the philosophical and practical foundations of thinking and doing international politics as
such. It reopens questions about the borders, that is, about the identity of the practices.
Sovereignty has been at the center of the practice and theory to define and demarcate
international politics and IR, its deconstruction one necessary starting point of poststructuralist analysis. Then, the analysis of governance tackles the organisation of the field. This
sociology of knowledge includes some Kuhnian ideas of paradigmatic thinking (see also
Part II). It looks at the historical emergence and the sociological analysis of the practices,
that is, of the way academic “experts” and diplomats are selected through particular
socialisation, education, material and social rewards. Thus, the empirical analysis of this
step is not directly linked to current events as the short moment of the Second Gulf War
in their reproduction. It just generally applies to the production of knowledge in IR and
not only to the analysis of the Second Gulf War.
The second step, the mobilisation of existing dispositions, is, empirically speaking,
the most interesting part, if empirical analysis has to be focused through one event.
Empirical analysis must identify how dispositions were enacted during the Second Gulf
War. It is here that the language becomes filled with references to the “power of…”
symbols, rituals, myths, metaphors, and images and which have given poststructuralist its
linguistic connotations.37 Although the linguistic input is undeniable, I will construct it
around its more anthropological dimensions which are more closely linked to concerns of
power. The empirical research programme here can be more closely focused. Applied to
the practice of statesmen, the analysis would touch the mobilisation of collective memory
during the Second Gulf War. Different “scripts” have been mobilized, not always
consciously, as for instance the World War II memory around the symbols like Hitler and
appeasement, or the Vietnam memory. A governance analysis would understand them not
just as means for propagandistic aims, but interpretive devices that help agents (and
observers) to make sense of the events, indeed to an extent that they govern perception
and construct the way reality is seen. Applied to the practice of the expert observer, the
Second Gulf War has mobilized the disciplinary debates that structure Realist IR: the just
37
The definition and operationalisation of these concepts will be given at the moment of the empricial
analysis.
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war debate, the isolationist-interventionist debate, and indeed, the puzzles in the translation
of power, that Neorealist analysis produces itself. The Neorealist puzzles are the empirical
mobilisation of the analytical dispositions in the field of IR.
The third step investigates the reproduction of dispositions, which, in cases where the
reproduction does not work, can even threaten the functioning of the field as such. Many
of the poststructuralist normative concerns are located exactly here: trying to influence the
working of the practices by deconstructing concepts, modes of thoughts and actions. This
can be done, for instance, by such a close hermeneutical rereading of traditional concepts
that they are “contaminated” for future usage in the discipline (and in politics), disturbing
the harmonious, self-assured, standard-discourse of Realism, and becoming thereby vectors
of change.38 In a sense, power analysis here will be done with a similar aim in mind. By
analysing openly the Neorealist power analysis as a practice of power itself, one questions
the easy reinscription of the Second Gulf War as a paradigmatic case for postivist
Realism. The analysis of governance of the Second Gulf War should show not only how
power can be differently conceived and made useful for analysis, but how the interpretation of events as a practice of legitimation is always an incidence of power.It is “an
arbitrary political construction that is always in the process of being imposed.”39 The
same applies, of course, for governance.
38
Ole Wæver, Beyond the ‘Beyond’ of Critical Theory (Copenhagen: Centre for Conflict and Peace
Research, Working Paper 1/1989), pp. 1-2, 89.
39
Richard K. Ashley, “Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique”,
Millennium, vol. 17, no. 2 (1988), p. 229.
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The clash of legitimation processes
Methodologically speaking, this chapter presents the research program of governance at
the second facet just outlined, namely about the interlocking of different practices. It has
two sides: (1) on the “sending side”, it tackles the question of whether self-referential
reproduction of practices has systematic (inertial) effects on other practices; and (2) on the
“receiving side”, it treats the systematic disturbance of the reproduction of practices by
others. Empirically, the research focus of the analysis of governance in this chapter could
be described as the study of the external effects of impersonal processes of legitimation.
The analysis of governance starts not with given agents, but with the giving of agents,
namely with their identity formation and systematic provision of endowments. Agent’s
dispositions are created and/or enscribed and only then appear in the individualist power
analysis. Governance analysis wants to show how practices can systematically dis/empower: it wants to reapprehend the taken for granted starting point of power analysis.
The result is an account in which the triggers of the Second Gulf War are apprehended in a different way. On the one hand, an analysis of governance investigates if
practices can be found that (systematically) reproduce the societal weakness and
consequent permanent threat to legitimacy in Iraq, or Arab countries in general. On the
other hand, it views the US trigger through the practices of US-identity formation, within
which foreign policy plays a central role for the construction of the “other” and thus for
the “self”. Here, the massive military answer appears not so much as a quest for security,
but as an adaptation to the end of the Cold War where an identity-providing enemy has
gone missing and the reproduction of established practices has been threatened.
1. The Legitimacy Problem in Changing Arab Societies: Iraq’s fuite en
avant reconsidered
Iraq’s fuite en avant, its precipitation into the Gulf Conflict, is only the most recent
instance of an endemic political legitimacy crisis in Arab societies. Yet, in order to
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understand such legitimacy problems, approaches in political economy have been ex-tended to studies of historical sociology and state-building. A research focus on governance
introduces a shift from the concern of political security or stability to legitimacy.
1.1. From stability to legitimacy: the shift in focus
Domestic insecurity in [weak] states will be high by definition.
That insecurity will spill over into regional relations. Domestic instability makes stable relations with neighbours difficult. (...) The
insecurity dynamics of weak states can be seen operating very
clearly at all levels (domestic, regional, global) in the Gulf and
the Middle East. This region, and others, demonstrate that anarchy
cannot provide security unless the units themselves are stable. The
security character of the system, and that of the units, cannot be
separated. (...) The problem is that we have no firm knowledge
about how to instill the process of development in places where
it has not happened naturally …
Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, pp. 154-156.
The underlying paradigm for the usual understanding of legitimacy problems in the Third
World are derived from modernization theory in its revised version presented by Samuel
Huntington.1 He shares the starting point of analysis, that is, the focus on the impact of
socio-economic modernization on political development. Yet, whereas the initial modernisation theories saw a close link between social modernisation and more pluralistic political
systems, Huntington insists that there is no necessary link between socio-economic
development and political stability. “Modernity breeds stability, modernization breeds
instability.”2
The destabilising effect of modernisation lies in the increased division of labour and
the concomitant multiplication of social forces, that have to be accomodated in society.
The “gap” between the two changes, social mobilisation and economic development,
“furnishes some measure for the impact of modernisation on political stability.”3 This is
the basis for the famous “gap-theory” which explains domestic instability by the gap
between rising expectations/aspirations and economic, social and political performance.
For Huntington, political stability can be achieved, if the rising expectations are met,
first on the economic level; if not there, the resulting social frustration can be met with
rising socio-economic mobility opportunities; if this does not happen, social frustration
will turn into political participation, which must be met by political institutionalization.
1
See also Part IV, chapter 10 where the feedback dynamics on the regional security system were often
done with this implicit reference.
2
Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968),
p. 41.
3
Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 53.
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Figure 12.1 Huntington’s gap theory (taken from: Lee Sigelman, “Understanding Political
Instability. An Evaluation of the Mobilization-institutionalization approach”, p. 212).
If not, political decay follows (see also Figure 12.1).4
Some dependency approaches dwelled upon and developed this analysis. Structural
power in the dependency tradition is concerned with the systematic weakening of developing countries brought about by market structures or the international division of labour.
An analysis of governance would try to understand how the practices of international
capitalism interfere with or are adapted by processes of legitimation in state-society
complexes. Therefore traditional dependency approaches have to be complemented by
studies that focus on the endemic creation and mobilization of legitimacy processes.
This rephrasing of Huntington’s approach, giving it a dimension of international
political economy has been already attempted by Guillermo O’Donnell’s model of bureaucratic authoritarianism. Like Huntington, O’Donnell understands political crises as a
reaction to a demand-performance gap, but includes those constraints to which late late
developing countries are exposed in their attempt to catch up. It refers in particular to the
difficulty arising after the end of the first phase of industrialisation (and import
substitution), the so-called deepening process (see Figure 12.2).5
4
This presentation cannot do justice to the elaborateness of Huntington’s empirical argument.
The figure is taken from David Collier, “Overview of the Bureaucratic Authoritarian Model”, in David
Collier (ed.) The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 28.
5
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Figure 12.2 Selected elements of O’Donnell’s argument concerning the emergence of
bureaucratic authoritatrianism
When an economy passes from the import-substitution of light industries to the
autononous production of consumer durables and intermediary capital goods, so the
deepening argument runs, developing countries are faced with a dilemma. Either they
avoid dependence on foreign capital by opting for autonomous development, risking,
however, involvement in a long-term and insecure project. This strategy has not proven
particularly successful. Its main result has often been the protection of domestic elites. Or
they take the “shortcut” of relying on imported technology and capital. But then they put
a series of strains on traditionalist populist policies. There is first the need to acquire
foreign exchange to pay for imports, as well as guaranteeing a positive business climate
for foreign investment to provide the necessary technology. The government would need,
furthermore, an efficient fiscal system to provide the resources for intervention, then a
policy of export promotion, of exchange rate stability, possibly with a foreign exchange
surplus, maybe linked to trade liberalisation to attract foreign capital. All this forces the
use of the budget for the selective cooptation of social groups, which in the absence of
a “legitimate” distribution policy, often proves to be the typical rule of government
coalition in praetorian societies. Thus external constraints in domestic stalemates produce
irrepressible demand-performance gaps which often are only resolved by military coups
and prolonged military rule.
This framework of analysis indicates how the interaction of the international system
with state-society complexes can produce a permanent state of disequilibrium. In other
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words, the concomitant effect of these two processes systematically undermines the creation of a viable social contract. The domestic legitimation processes get “trapped”. On the
“receiving” side, legitimation is questioned, and the underlying practices weakened. Thus,
the international economic system, as it works today, is placing constraints on Iraq, as on
other developing countries, that foreclose several of its options.
1.2. The Social Construction of Arab Political Legitimacy
Social mobilisation can undermine political legitimacy only if the adaptation of valuesystems does not succeed. This also presuppposes a particular understanding of legitimacy.
Hudson defines it “as the extent to which leadership and regimes are perceived by elites
and masses as congruent and compatible with the society’s fundamental myths—those
‘value-impregnated beliefs’ (as Robert MacIver puts it) that hold society together.”6
Consequently, he follows the modernisation theory’s general thrust that legitimacy
problems arise in times of rapid social mobilisation. The intersubjective approach
underlying governance, however, sees legitimacy as reproduced not only by conscious
acquiescence. To use the words of the definition, it is not the conscious perception of
congruence between regimes and values, but the taken-for-granted identity between
regimes and values that is important for the legitimation of a regime.
Aware of the risks of cultural reifications, the study of governance would point to the
cultural adaptation problem in particular in Arab societies which have been exposed to the
influence of Western military power and ideas. The reproduction of their cultural practices
have since then become inextricably linked to the West, but have proven unable to produce a social contract that would be both acceptable in the overwhelming international
society of nation-states and legitimate with regard to transmitted value-systems. Iraq’s fuite
en avant can hardly resolve the legitimacy problem in Arab societies, although it might
have stabilised Hussein’s regime, if it succeeded.7
The practice of Arab politics in the context of the expansion of Western international
society
Governance analysis focuses on cases where one practice systematically impinges on the
reproduction of another. In this section, the research programme consists in seeing how
the expansion of Western state-building practices interact with political or state-building
practices outside.8
6
Michael C. Hudson, Arab Politics. The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1977), p. 2.
7
The purpose of this chapter is not to discuss and analyse all different approaches to state-building in the
Middle East. This would require an area specialist to provide a wider understanding of the topic. I will only
show how one particular interpretation of the endemic legitimacy crisis would be accounted within an analysis
of governance.
8
This is a central part of the English School of IR, as well. See Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds),
The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
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The construction of a state structure in the Arab world did not follow the same model
as in the West. There are two essential traits of the construction of the occidental state
which since the last centuries both complemented and fought each other: the contractual
reference which propounds an idea of a state as originating in popular legitimacy, and the
reference to natural law sketching a state whose authority is circumscribed by a superior
law which is even sometimes superior to popular sovereignty. Here, the state developed
as an autonomous political space, independent of the Church. In the Islamic world, the
state did not emancipate itself from religious rule. On the contrary, the state became an
instrument for the creation of an empire for the new faith.9
The Western model has become part of the very definition of Islamic politics since
the end of the 18th century. Since then, the reproduction of Islamic identity has been
coupled with the perception of and adaption to Western modernity which arrived both
interms of thoughts and military domination. There have been three different attempts in
the Islamic word to accomodate its identity to the “incoming” modernity.10 The general
thrust of the reformists at the beginning of the 19th century consisted in using the
achievements of modernity better to defend the Islamic identity from the West. Islamic
thinkers perceive or construct modernity as an instruments which is universally applicable
by different cultures which can, however, keep their independence. Yet the perceived
incompatibility of Western instruments and Islamic identity, and the increasing opposition
to the West sounded the death knell of this undertaking. Since then, Islam has proposed
a different view of modernity, sometimes in competition with, sometimes excluding of the
West.
Islamic reformism is replaced by Islamic revivalism when direct colonisation happens
in Egypt or Tunisia. In that context, imitation is neither possible nor desirable. Islam is
constructed as a civilisation, thereby reasserting the monism of Islamic thought.11 Since
the second third of this century, the Islamist wing has radicalised the revivalist position.
In this case, the Islamic troubles are seen not as an effect of the impossible imitation, but
of the very intention to imitate. Not only is there no universal modernity, but those who
aspire it are responsible for the Islamic defeat. Fundamentalist political theory is
constructed on its rejection of the Western model and ends up in a anti-Western political
practice which reinforces its identity. The politisation of Islam or Re-islamisation of
politics is not a new phenomenon but an answer to both a failed occidentalisation (in its
economic and political dimensions) and to Western domination.12
9
Bertrand Badie, Les deux États. Pouvoir et société en Occident et en terre d’Islam (Paris: Fayard, 1986),
pp. 30, 43.
10
For the following, see Bertrand Badie, Les deux États, pp. 85-128.
11
This is also the period when the Wahhabist system appeared. For this point and a slightly different
periodisation, see Bassam Tibi, Die Krise des modernen Islams. Eine vorindustrielle Kultur im wissenschaftlich-technischen Zeitalter. Expanded ed. (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp. 67-70.
12
Bassam Tibi, Die Krise des modernen Islams, p. 65 and passim.
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At the same time, Western models regained influence after decolonisation. This period
mobilized the only Western political idea which had a real entrance into Islamic thought,
namely the nation. True, the national reference has never been entirely divorced from an
Islamic referent. Furthermore, the idea of the nation includes a reference to sovereignty
only with regard to the foreign world and not the sovereignty of the national collectivity
as in the West. Yet this idea was mobilized together with socialist or Marxist theories and
policies adapted to Islamic culture.
The structural legitimacy problem derives from the (violent) meeting of the Western
state-model with a political culture to which the Western discourse of legitimacy cannot
be easily transposed. Following Bertrand Badie, Islamic political culture traditionally
denies any delegation of authority away from the divine to human and any basis for the
autonomy of individual wills (necessary for the social contract). Power (puissance) for the
human and power (authority) for God. Necessity for the first, and legitimacy for the
second; these are the two fundamental oppositions that structure Islamic culture.13 God
being the only sovereign, popular sovereignty is difficult to conceive. The idea of
representation is not a conduit of sovereignty but often a mere source of advice.
Moreover, the political system cannot refer to a national identity which it would be said
to represent. Arab culture has different identity affiliations, below and across national
boundaries: asabiyya (the kinship group), qawmiyya (ethno-linguistic concept of peoplehood), and the umma (the organic family of Muslims).
Thus, the executives cannot claim the quality of a sovereign or of a representative and
are openly exposed to forms of systemic criticisms. The specificity of the Islamic case is
not the conservatism of this culture or its religious background, but the ease with which
human laws, deprived eo ipso of any legitimacy, can become a pretext for protest.
Whereas in the West, legitimacy can be appealed to within the existing political system,
and is often even codified, voice in the Islamic culture will inevitably appeal to a
legitimacy outside the political system. Whereas the West knows a “demand-culture”,
Islam knows, so Bertrand Badie’s argument, only a culture de l’émeute.
De facto, the social system does not distinguish functionally between state and society,
polity and economy, public and private, civil and military. The always-entangled political
system is challenged by pre-existing patriarchal, clientelistic and religious authority
structures. The Ba‘athist Iraqi leadership’s insistence on rather abstract claims to authority,
based on socialism, nonalignment, and economic development, are not always enthusiastically embraced. Traditional authority symbols are still important and the regime has no
monopoly of them. “One of the advantages of traditional monarchical legitimacy is that
the symbols are specific to a given family or individual, while in the case of regimes
legitimated by modern ideologies, opposition groups can claim to be a more authentic
13
Bertrand Badie, les Deux États, p. 113.
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261
embodiment of the sacred abstractions than the regime in power.”14 Thus, ideological
legitimacy with difficulty counterbalances traditional authority. Often, only personal and
charismatic legitimation can at least temporarily fill this structural legitimacy deficit,
which explains also why the neo-patrimonial state, based on authoritarian repression,
remains the main state model in the region.15
Taking stock of the impermeability of the society, the political centre redirects its
activities toward those functions it can satisfy without mobilising the periphery, as for
instance the military. In Iraq, the present ruling elite, in defending its contested position,
became increasingly tribally homogeneous. Hussein’s “Takriti-connection” and nomenclature bases its power on the military and the only party, the Ba‘th.16
Dispositions of Iraqi political practice and the mobilisation of nationalism in the Second
Gulf War
Saddam Hussein’s regime can be characterised as a praetorian rentier state. Despite its
undoubted importance for the preservation of a rentier structure, it is not the oil wealth
which is responsible for the rentier state. In Iraq, the British grand imperial design had
the consequence of placing regional power in the hands of the feudal lords of the time.
British Protection Treaties empowered not only these lords, but their particular dynasties.
They established fixed borders. With these two instruments, traditional oppositional
processes were effectively curtailed, for instance the traditional right to dismiss a tribal
dynasty, or to leave massively the tribe. British policy meant a territorialisation of Arab
politics which enlarged the personal power of tribal lords at the expense of traditional
oppositions. Those lords usually lived from a system of paid trade protection. Thus, the
emergence of the oil economy only exacerbated a rentier authoritarianism based on corporatism, the satellisation of civil society and the massive use of violence.17
During the “second liberal moment” (Ghassan Salamé), the period between 1925 and
1958, the governmental (professional political) elite in the city and the land owners in the
hinterland struck a bargain to divide political rule: the executive for the first, Parliament
for the second. Increasingly, state-building meant the use of government structures for a
systematic spoil. 58 cabinets and 16 legislative elections reflected less external constraints
than strugggles within an elite, more and more divorced from the larger population. The
ministers and heads of governments were just reshuffled every time.18
14
Michael C. Hudson, Arab Politics. The Search for Legitimacy , pp. 105/06. Legitimacy is used here in
the Weberian sense.
15
Bertrand Badie, Les Deux États, pp. 197-98.
16
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonfliktes, p. 9.
17
Referring to the studies of Khaldoun An-Naquib, see Ghassan Salamé, “Sur la causalité d’un manque:
pourquoi le monde arabe n’est-il donc pas démocratique?”, pp. 314-15.
18
Ghassan Salamé, “Sur la causalité d’un manque: pourquoi le monde arabe n’est-il donc pas
démocratique?”, p. 322-323.
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After the coup in 1958, the Iraqi regime placed an enormous importance on security
and violent solutions. This can be linked to the external and internal geopolitical consequences of decolonisation: outside borders that Iraq has never recognised since its
independence 1932 and internal heterogeneity with major social rifts: 20-25% are Kurds
not Arabs, 60% are Shi‘its, not Sunnites.19 Furthermore, it met the resistance of big (proBritish) land-owners. Yet, the present Iraqi regime has been more ruthless than other Arab
regimes in the region in persecuting its domestic adversaries. The Communist party,
exceptionally big in Iraq, was politically liquidated by the assassination of 31 of its major
representatives in 1978. The Kurd resistance has been suppressed by an open civil war
since 1974 through massive deportations and resettlements, and massive liquidation
including gas-attacks.20
With oil revenue, Iraq’s social project became more oriented toward distribution,
without increasing productivity. The oil wealth avoided external control. Iraq never asked
for a stand-by agreement from the IMF exactly for this reason. It produced a form of
rentier-state where the privileged groups stabilised with minimum income guarantee,
health investments, family protection, the recognition and extension of women’s rights,
artificial suppression of unemployment through a plethoric public sector and intensive
education policy. Deprived of a stable legitimacy, it is this social contract which has been
threatened with the mounting costs of policing the state and the diminishing income from
oil.21
The authoritarian turn of the Iraqi regime, based on a modernist and nationalist
project, shows how its elite faces the kind of legitimacy problem mentioned above. The
Iranian revolution has only worsened the problem. When the Iraqi army attacked Iran in
the First Gulf War, not only geopolitical leadership in the Gulf region, but also the iraqi
legitimacy project was at stake. The recent fundamentalist turn in Arab politics aggravates
the structural legitimacy problem. This opposition can work with a religious reference
which fulfills different functions: it legitimates many forms of systemic protest to the
regime, it offers a symbolic repertoire, and it confiscates a part of political decisionmaking and the production of norms.22
In other words, there are specific necessities to reproduce domestic consent (which
refers to all the different Arab identity references), which have implications for daily
politics, whether inside or outside the state or the Arab nation. Indeed, they alone read as
the synthesis of a user’s guide to a political programme in Arab countries.
19
Elizabeth Picard, “Le régime irakien et la crise. Les ressorts d'une politique”, Maghreb-Machrek
(octobre-décembre 1990), p. 28.
20
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonfliktes, p. 11.
21
Elizabeth Picard, “Le régime irakien et la crise. Les ressorts d'une politique”, Maghreb-Machrek
(octobre-décembre 1990), pp. 25-26.
22
Bertrand Badie, Les deux États, p. 270.
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The widely shared values of Arabism and Islam have given rise to certain specific,
widely shared interests. These include, first and foremost, the liberation of Palestine, the
last part of the Arab homeland occupied by an alien power. The include the development of inter-Arab solidarity, though not necessarily political unity, so that the Arabs
will be able to protect their petroleum riches and emerge collectively as a major world
power. They include nonalignment with (and no submission to) any of the Great
Powers. They include, now that modernizing ideologies have become widely accepted
by Arab elites, general commitments to economic and social development and a more
equal distribution of wealth and power. They also include commitment to a renaissance
of Arab-Islamic culture. The Arab leader or politician desiring to win and hold power
by maximizing his legitimacy will try to identify himself as an effective worker in
behalf of all these interests, indeed, more effective than his competitors.23
It is in this context of an inflexible political demand structure facing the government that
the Iraqi triggering of the conflict has to be placed and which is the background on which
the actor’s identity and thus dispositions of preferences and interests are constituted.
Iraq’s reference to nationalism during the Gulf Crisis is thus both understandable and
yet insufficient to solve the underlying problem in the long run. This is linked to the
ambiguity that a nationalist project must have in the context of Islamic political culture.
Arab nationalism knew more success as a mode of protest against modernity (in the form
of Western interference) than as an instrument of its promotion.24 It can fulfill many
legitimacy functions but these, coming from different backgrounds, can be contradictory.
Domestically, it can coopt national oppositions; regionally, it defends against panarab
movements (Nasserism, Ba‘thism); internationally, it is exactly an expression of these
movements in their defence against Western political and economic dependence, and of
Arab culture against Westernization.25
Hence, Iraqi’s fuite en avant and the relative rigidity of its behaviour once the crisis
continued to last are only another incidence of the reproduction problems of Arab political
practices. This does not mean that Irag had to invade and behave as it did but that an
analysis of governance would understand its behaviour in terms of dispositions within its
legitimation practices.
The apparent Iraqi claim to inherit the Arab nationalist mantle, with its overtones of
radicalism and anti-imperialism thus had a powerful (sic !) effect on peoples and
governments alike; on peoples because of their search for an integrative ideology and
on governments because of their need for ideological justification. Against that background, all the necessary conditions for the crisis that ensued after Iraq’s invasion of
Kuwait had already been long prepared. The actual event was merely a catalyst for a
political evolution which had been stimulated by quite different events.26
23
Michael C. Hudson, Arab Politics, p. 54.
Bertrand Badie, Les deux États, p. 180.
25
Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonfliktes, p. 47.
26
George Joffe, “Middle Eastern Views of the Gulf Conflict and its Aftermath”, pp. 185-86. The different
events, Joffe alludes to, are, however, not exactly the same as the ones here proposed.
24
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Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
1.3. Conclusion
The second facet of analysis of governance looked at the systematic effects of practices
seen from the “receiving practices’ side”. Here political economy has been supplemented
by historical sociology in order to account for Arab legitimation problems, because the
practices’ shared systems of meanings and values are neither independent from, nor reducible to material constraints. Practices have a life of their own and are not just passive
“receivers”.27 Of the three practice-agent links in an analysis of governance, the
systematic furthering of capacities appears in this reconstruction less important for the
triggering of the conflict than the social construction of identity and of thinkable action.
The security account for understanding the underlying dynamics which pushed Iraq
into the Second Gulf War combines ideas of legitimacy with issues of “political” security.
This reconceptulisation of security is an important improvement to prior geopolitical
studies. But the underlying model for apprehending political security is still very much
derived from Huntington. Consequently, when security analysts define the future policies
that would enhance security in the region, they propose, next to the invariable recommendations to “balance power”, a particular mix of economic development and/or political
participation to mitigate the effects of modernisation and external dependence.28
Shifting away from stability, the present study illustrated the trigger of the conflict in
the reproduction processes of Arab identity and legitimacy. Discursive identity practices
have for two centuries included a Western referent and have been unable to reproduce
themselves without systematic challenge. Political regimes and their agents have become
trapped in a dilemma of choosing either an imported and prefabricated modernity which
does not mobilise and which is seen as illegitimate, or an Islamism which does not
succeed in seeing modernity other than negatively, and which legitimates systematic
protest rather than the exercise of power. Kuwait might have stabilised Hussein’s regime,
but since the problem is neither purely financial, nor to be resolved by nationalist appeals,
it was just another stumble from one crisis to the next.
2. The tacit power of the strong: effects of superpower practices
Our way of life is not negotiable.
President George Bush
This section will tackle this research programme from the “sending side”, by analysing
if the self-referential reproduction of practices has systematic effects on other practices.
In the following this type of analysis will be illustrated with two ways of approaching the
27
O’Donnell himself stresses the point to base the approach on historical sociology. See Guillermo
O’Donnell, “Reflections of the Patterns of Change in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State,” Latin American
Research Review, vol. 13, no. 1 (1978), in particular pp. 4-5.
28
As one example among many, see Shahram Chubin, “Post-war Gulf security”, Survival, vol. XXXIII,
no. 2 (March-April 1991), pp. 140-157. See chapter 10.
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The clash of legitimation processes
265
study of the Gulf War. The first, reminiscent of Senghaas’ deterrence studies, but
reapproaching it from a intersubjective perspective, will claim that the unexpected sudden
and massive response by the US can be understood not with the sole reference to the Iraqi
threat but through the way US identity practices constructed it as such. The categorisation
(and not mere perception) of threats and the very conception of foreign policy is linked
to questions and interpretation of one’s own identity. Thus, in this reading, US action was
mobilising established dispositions of tacit identity practices which provided a “powerful”
prima facie legitimacy to US (re)actions. The second analytical focus, closer to dependency approaches or Susan Strange’s concept of structural power, highlights other inertial
“external” effects of apparently “domestic” practices. This will be illustrated it with
reference to the field of information production and the the practice of self-censorship. It
is such a perfect illustration, because it involves both the way in which agents mobilise
the doxa of their field, and how a US “domestic” practice has — via the international
division of information — major effects on the way the “world” perceives itself.
2.1. “Desperately seeking danger”: the constitution of US identity through its
foreign policy in the Gulf
In the life of a nation, we’re called upon to define who we are
and what we believe.
President George Bush, 8 August 1990
announcing the sending of troops to Saudi Arabia
One of the rare explicit poststructuralist studies on the Second Gulf War has been
conducted by David Campbell. It is inscribed into his general understanding of US foreign
policy as a constitutive practice for US identity. US identity practices create dispositions
which have an effect on international politics. They mobilize the practices’ memory for
the very identification of events, which are, in a double hermeneutical approach, always
already an instance of interpretation. They also predispose to certain actions, as the search
for a danger and its often personified representation, which, in turn, have to be “secured”.
In this respect, the Second Gulf War is an important moment in the reproduction of a US
identity practice in need of adaptation with the demise of the traditional danger/enemy,
or, indeed, a founding moment to find a substitute to the Cold War threat.
It is an important moment for the study of governance, because it shows how
practices construct dispositions that are concealed from an interactionist approach which
concentrates on action-reaction patterns. It is finally an instance of governance because
the underlying logic of the practice which is responsible for the enactment of dispositions
of action and perception reproduces along with its “naturalness” legitimacy for the agents
and their action.
Foreign Policy and the enactment of state identity
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States exist as a collective reference uphold and reinterpreted by practices, such as, for
example, government or administration, public opinion, or shared language. Hence, states
are devoid of stable (not to speak of ontological) identities, and therefore need constantly
to be recreated. The enactment and “rewriting” of identity is done by political practices,
such as foreign policy, which operate in their name while effacing their dependence upon
representation. The representation of identity, for its very meaning, must appear as natural.
Thus, “the tension between the demands of identity and the practices that constitute it can
never be fully resolved, because the performative nature of identity can never be fully
revealed… For a state to end its practices of representation would be to expose its lack
of prediscursive foundations; stasis would be death.”29 Consequently, education, socialisation and the staging of political symbols of the state, like anthems, flags, memorials, play
a major role in the reproduction and, thus, the very existence of the state.
Such practices seek to align identity with territory, so that it becomes possible to
demarcate a state. Since identity derives its meaning only through its relationship with
difference, “the processes of inscription through which a political community is imagined
involve numerous disciplinary practices working to contain contingency and to distance
the ‘self’ from the ‘other’. Boundaries are thereby constructed, spaces demarcated,
standards of legitimacy incorporated, intepretations of history privileged, alternatives
marginalized, and “secure” identities established. In this context the idea of a border takes
on added dimensions and different resonances, such that we can suggest a distinction
between the territorial boundaries of the state and the ethical boundaries of identity.”30
Being at the crucial link between “internal” and “external”, and in the identification/construction of the “other”, foreign policy is a privileged practice for the reproduction
of identity and its boundaries.31 Very often, although not necessarily, foreign policy
practices achieve the unquestioned enactment of identity by appealing to dangers, which
are, in turn, exteriorised. What counts as a danger is inextricably linked to a self/other
definition, or in other words, is part of the very reproduction of this distinction.
This has two consequences. For the practice of identity as such, it means that through
the representation of danger, foreign policy helps to achieve the objectivation of the
self.32 At the same time, the habitus of such a practice is disposed to look for a substitute
of dangers to reinscribe its naturalised self.
US foreign policy’s “other” and the end of Cold War
The empirical study of the “grammar” of foreign policy practices is always imbued with
the historical context within which it is done. It is always an ex post analysis. The
29
David Campbell, Writing Security. United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press), p. 11.
30
David Campbell, Politics without Principle, p. 24.
31
David Campbell, Writing Security, p. 69.
32
David Campbell, Writing Security, p. 79.
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267
geneaological approach reopens the historical struggles that are naturalized once a practice
becomes established but it does not deny that this reconstruction is itself historically
situated. Thus, the present problematization of US foreign policy practice should be seen
in the context of the writing/rewriting of the Cold War and its end.33
Campbell sees in an apocalyptic evangelism of fear a characteristic of US identity
practices, “in which a discourse of danger functions as providence and foretells a threat
that prompts renewal”.34 In this discourse, several agents can take on the role of the
Antichrist. In all times of shaken identity, this disposition will scapegoat another target.
This target is not territorially limited. Campbell argues that with the end of the
nineteenth century the identity of “America” becomes part and parcel of the state’s global
reach.35 Furthermore, after World War II discourses of security/danger also disciplined
domestic oppositional groups. War Camps for (American) Japanese and McCarthyism
show that the boundaries that foreign policy drew between Americans and “un-Americans”
are far from referring only to territorial borders. “Danger was being totalized in the
external realm in conjunction with its increased individualization in the internal field, with
the result being the performative reconstitution of the borders of the state’s identity. In this
sense, the cold war need to be understood as a disciplinary strategy that was global in
scope but national in design.”36
This explains also why the confidential reports on security policy in the US are replete
with references to general goals or moral principles which appear as national values and
guide both analysis and policy recommendations. In this reading, “containment” means
something quite different. It is not only about a Soviet (or communist) threat, but an
attempt to preserve, and thereby to reproduce, a particular view of the US itself.37 The
foreign policy constitutes an identity which must be uphold even if transformations of the
object of enmity might happen. With the end of the Cold War, such a crisis of
representation has happened.38
The inertial effects of established practices become visible when the “other” construction shifted. There has been first the unsuccessful substitution of the “red scare” with
33
For a discussion of the way theories predisopose to understand change in the context of the end of the
Cold War, see Heikki Patomäki, “What Is It That Changed with the End of the Cold War? An Analysis of
the Problem of Identifying and Explaining Change”, in Pierre Allan & Kjell Goldmann (eds), The End of the
Cold War. Evaluating Theories of International Relations (Dordrecht et al.: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
1992), pp. 179-225.
34
David Campbell, Writing Security, p. 153.
35
David Campbell, Writing Security, p. 154.
36
David Campbell, Writing Security, pp. 171-72.
37
This is implicitly acknowledged by George F. Kennan himself. He argued that it is not the Soviet
“virus” which threatens the US but internal decay. The real rivalry between Russia and the US was the
competition for the solution of their own respective domestic problems and for the achievement of their ideals.
Hence, the Russian danger is best met by resolving the racial problems, urbanisation, education and
environment at home, looking with interest to the Soviet mass education programme. See George F. Kennan,
Rußland, der Westen und die Atomwaffe. The Reith Lectures (Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1958), pp. 15-22.
38
David Campbell, Writing Security, pp. 33, 195.
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Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
“narcoterrorism” and then with continued Japan-bashing. Undoubtedly, the US administration’s behaviour showed its reactivation of existing Cold War dispositions also with regard
to a quickly-identified new danger: Islam and the fundamentalist threat endowed with
potential nuclear capabilities.39 Despite a degree of US co-responsibility for the crisis
which led to the invasion of Kuwait and for the escalation to open war40, US identity
practices reproduced a discourse of moral certitude which inscribed a series of boundaries
between “us” and “them”. One of the major effects of the Second Gulf War was to secure
the identity and purpose of the United States and its allies.41
Lest there be any doubt that it is the maintenance of a coherent subjectivity, not
rationality in the old external means-ends sense that is at stake, the commentator is
explicit, and here I can rest my case for the operation of a desire whose restless quest
is aimed — through its objects of attention — at its own constitutive identity: ‘The
great lesson of how the cold war ended may be stated in words: being is superior to
doing. What a nation is, is essential. What it does can only express what it is.’42
Identity practices in the Gulf and effects of exclusion in the West
Interpreting the Second Gulf War as a moment in the reproduction of practices of identity
formation which are not confined to the territorial borders of a state implies not only that
transgression will happen abroad, but also that the disciplining effect of the practice will
be present domestically.
The problematisation of the Second Gulf War for identity
practices must therefore also focus on the identification of “otherness” within countries.
Having mobilized dispositions of this identity practice in the building up of the Gulf crisis,
the effects have been felt in inflamed exclusionism all over the Western allies’ countries.
This helps to understand the strong anti-Arab and anti-Turk racism mounting during the
conflict, despite the fact that Turkey and many Arab countries were part of the coalition.
Hence, one of the observers thinks that “one of the major political, social and cultural
costs of this war, the present recession and the ‘new world order’, is to have fed aggressivity worldwide and launched neighbours against each other in Western, Eastern and
Southern cities.” Instead of strengthening democratic political culture and institutions, the
reproduction of identity via the constrcution of a difference that cuts across countries
populations seriously undermined the democracy for the sake of which the war was
supposedly fought. For Frank, this is the price to be paid for the “new world order”.43
39
Andre Gunder Frank, “Sin novedad en el Este. El mito del ‘nuevo orden’ mundial,” in Silviu Brucan,
Andre Gunder Frank, Johan Galtung, and Immanuel Wallerstein, El orden munidal tras la crisis de la guerra
del golfo (Alicante: Instituto de cultura «Juan Gil-Albert», 1992), p. 58.
40
See chapter 11, 1.3. “Shortcircuiting competing diplomacies” and chapter 14.
41
David Campbell, Politics without Principle, p. 80.
42
Michael J. Shapiro, “That obscure object of violence: Logistics and Desire in the Gulf War,” in David
Campbell and Michael Dillon (eds) The political subject of violence (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1993), p. 134. The quote is taken from William Pfaff, “Redefining world power,” Foreign Affairs. vol.
70 (1990-1991), p. 48.
43
Andre Gunder Frank, “Sin novedad en el Este. El mito del nuevo orden mundial,” pp. 58-59.
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This does not mean that the link from the Gulf war via identity practices to racism
and exclusionary actions is to be thought in terms of agents’ intentions. This would be a
typical functional fallacy to argue from the effects backwards to intentions. But it does
mean that identity practices can effectively foster the legitimacy of such actions. And as
such it is a moment of an analysis of governance. The question of agent responsibility is,
as usual, for governance, not easily established, but this is not the only purpose of power
analysis. It will be taken up in the concluding chapter.
2.2. The governance of information
Le propre d’un avion furtif, c’est qu’on le voit trop tard, il est
déjà là. On n’a pas eu le temps de se préparer à le voir. C’est la
même chose avec la technique du temps réel de CNN. On n’a pas
le temps de se préparer à un événement, il a déjà eu lieu. On est
sommé de l’accepter ou de le refuser. La télévision en direct est
une véritable mise en demeure. On ne discute pas un image en
direct, on le subit.
Paul Virilio, L’écran du désert, pp. 74-75.
The Second Gulf War has also given rise to revival of studies on the production of
information. Most impressive was the fact that many commentators were quickly aware
of the unprecedented role that media networks and satellite television played during the
conflict: a CNN war, live.
These reflections are linked in two ways to a power analysis. The first is through the
problem of propaganda which was already dealt with in Part IV. Here news and information are just a power resource which can be used to influence the perception of reality
and the mobilisation of opinion and action. The second way to approach the problem
within a power analysis is to question to what extent the medium as such is “neutral” to
its users, producers and consumers alike. More precisely, the research programme would
focus on the organization of the field of information production and its systematic effects.
Linked to the political economy approaches of the social construction of options, it asks
more specifically how modern technologies and the commercial organisation of
information in the dominant production site, the US, affect public opinion and (naturalises)
the writing of contemporary history elsewhere. A more poststructuralist inspired approach
will then capture the phenomenon of self-censorship.
“The tyranny of real-time”44: the powerful objectivation of live TV
Satellite TV does not only give first-hand news; it also gives immediate pictures. The
political culture of Western societies has switched from logocentrism to photocentrism.
Nowadays, pictures command perception.
44
Paul Virilio, L’écran du désert. Chroniques d’une guerre (Paris: Galilée, 1991), p. 15.
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This creates a new form of journalism. Whereas before journalists were the selfconscious intermediary between data and news, responsible for their selection, they now
see the pictures exactly when the spectators see them. There is no intermediate figure
which could interfere with “reality”.45 Hence the news consumer lives with the impression that the raw picture is closer to reality, more authentic, than the prior cut and selected
one. “Live” is closer to the truth. Less comments means more freedom of thought for the
spectator. But the lack of a filter, such as the journalist, means only that filtering becomes
invisible, or at least not attachable to a person. “For six weeks and one hundred hours we
were drawn into the most powerful cyberspace yet created, a technically reproduced
world-text that seemed to have no author or reader, just enthusiastic participants and
passive viewers.”46
This cannot be reduced either to a conspiracy, nor to a simple technological
“constraint”, because nobody is forced to use the technologies available. But all have to
live with the consequences, as in the Second Gulf War. One is that the spectators, be they
professionals like the US President, or the public layman, had much less time to read,
write, or even reflect effectively about the war.
Another, at least as important, consequence is what could be called the power of
noise. Following Virilio, there is not much use of distinguishing between ‘information’
and ‘propaganda’, because active — interactive — disinformation is not to be understood
as a lie. It is rather the excess of contradictory information. When saturation becomes the
most important effect, then information have to be produced at high quantity. Since the
overkill of information much reduces the impact of the last news, the most important is
no longer to have the last word, but to have the first.47 In the Gulf War, the first word
was nearly always the military’s film material. This systematically advantaged a particular
view of the conflict.
Commercial reality — reality for commercials
The commercial organisation of news in the country in which the major satellite TVs are
located has an impact on the way information is sought, produced and distributed all over
the world. The incessant quest for the high audiences, needed for the commercial
financing of the networks had not only an impact on the selection of information, but also
on its presentation. Form is content; it is part of the message.
Two “formal” features were especially influenced by commercial necessities, speed
and “cleanness”. The first constraint seems to come from the expectation of the spectators
45
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 272 writes that “perhaps the most important to be learned from
the Gulf War is the need to redefine the relationship between the media and their audience via live television,
rather than indirectly via the interpretations with which journalists have traditionally informed their readers
and viewers of what was going on…”
46
James Der Derian, Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992),
pp. 174-75.
47
Paul Virilio, L’écran du désert. Chroniques d’une guerre, p, 134.
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receiving the “first” pictures to be seen on their screens. Networks are competing with
“first” news. Live reportage is a necessity and has to be organized beforehand.48 Second,
the story must not dissipate potential commercial suppliers. Both together constrained the
field within which information was selected and sent. It was a very particular “eye”
through which the world came to see itself.
The first consequence was to privilege live and/or dynamic pictures. Spectacular live
pictures were rare. The first night bombings were “exciting” for the fact of the war, not
for the pictures themselves. Night air attacks during the first phase of US bombing and
the distance to the real front during the ground attack provided little informative pictures
for jounralists. It was reduced to static pictures during and after the whole thing
happened, which are, in terms of television, relatively unattractive. Thus, the images
provided by the US military were filling a “need”. As already menitoned, the military put
cameras on some of their bombs and could show very spectacular pictures. The more the
war went on, the more the audience was on the verge of switching back to their regular
television viewing habits, the more the networks used the military tapes.
The second consequence of this commercial organisation of information is the
required cleanness. The synergy of different commercial practices put constraints on the
images to be sent. It is not necessarily a conscious choice to prevent particular tapes to
be sent, but the overall pressure to produce a “positive” image of the war has been felt
— not only in later recallings of the same journalists that somewhat found their own
capacities fooled (by themselves) during the war. The war was a big commercial. 1127
US firms have seen the Second Gulf War as a means for public relations. The sponsoring
included at least 60.000 Coke and Pepsi Packs, 22.000 boxes of beer, 100.000 phone
cards, 5000 walkmen, 40.000 mini-compasses, 60.000 tapes, 1000 footballs, innumerable
cigarettes, 100 gulf sticks and even some cross country skis. If one soldier appeared with
any of these products on the screen of one of the major networks, it was $US 250.000
worth of publicity, that is, the price of a comparable commercial.
This ad is only efficient, as long as the environment remains “positive”.
Thus, the clinical video-clip of the war suited all participants: the Ministery of War,
which controls all the tapes, because it keeps the Western populations at ease and hence
the war feasible; CNN and the other commercial stations, which launch embellished
pictures around the globe, because the horrible-beautiful image of a horrible-beautiful
war kept the advertising maecenas in good temper; the public relations people, because
they profit from the war-patriotism.49
48
The experiences of the Second Gulf War were clearly visible during the UN operations in Somalia. The
invasion by US troops was prepared by an invasion of TV teams. The spotlight of the waiting journalists were
blinding the troops during their landing on the beach. Military actions as night show.
49
For the data and the quote, see Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, Kuno Kruse & Birgit Schwarz, “Zensoren,
Voyeure, Reportes des Sieges. Im Golfkrieg triumphiert die Propaganda”, Die Zeit, no. 6 (1 - 6 February
1991), p. 17 (my translation).
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Again, this is not to say that “big business” wanted the war, although some business might
have done so. We are not in an intentional account. It is the collusion of their interests
with the dispositions of the news management in the US that produces a particular way
of seeing reality. This production of truth and its legitimacy effects are a moment of the
analysis of governance.
The preemption of alternative perception: the weapons-eye view
The media’s disposition in the US reinforced a stress on the technical execution and the
reproduction of the Second Gulf War as delivered by the official pictures. It created a
reality which appeared nearly exclusively in belligerent terms through the eyes of the
“clean” weapons, the “surgical” strikes. To interpret these pictures prepared by military
eyes, the networks relied heavily on logistical experts, former military and intelligence
personnel. War was often displayed through the sighting dimension of its killing devices.
“Words became filler between images produced by gun-cameras using night-vision or
infrared that cut through the darkness to find and destroy targets lit-up by lasers or
radiating heat.”50
The mutually feeding practices of US news production, public relations for multiple
products and the “imperatives” of real-time journalism have produced a writing of history
which legitimates the strategic view of the war.
The weapons-eye view beame sovereign, then, in the sense that it was authoritative,
controlling, and largely legitimated by the perspectives of the subject/viewers… In short
the war was described and shown by reference to the weapons rather than the affected
bodies. Accordingly, violence emerges as a kind of ‘disarming rather than injuring’, and
the reading of its significance is abstracted to make it appear to be a technological
contest; a series of exchanges whose outcomes amount to imbalances of logistical
expertise. In discoursively reproducing this orientation to war, the media were rendered
as linguistic dwarfs... as smaller versions of the same thinking, as it slavishly helped to
turn arbitrary violence into rational action.51
It created a new consensual reality which dominated the representation (and maybe even
the formulation) of US policy in the Gulf. “The combination of surgical video strikes and
information carpet bombing worked.”52 Hence, once the missile and video shooting
started, public opinion turned around. With the outbreak of the conflict, the same public
opinion which was far from being convinced from the neccesity to die for Kuwait,
supported by 80% the restrictions on the press and 60% wanted even more military
control over the press and information.53 This created a feedback pressure on the
networks. Despite honest intentions to provide a neutral news management, the media
50
51
52
53
James Der Derian, Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War, p. 180.
Michael J. Shapiro, “That obscure object of violence: Logistics and Desire in the Gulf War,” p. 132.
James Der Derian, Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War, pp. 180-81.
Andre Gunder Frank, “Third World War: A political economy of the Gulf War...”, p. 277.
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became even more prisoners of their field’s dispositions. As already stated in Part IV,
journalists later perceived that news was made through them. But this not only happened
for the different forms of censorships, but through the “rules of the game” which, through
the setting of news production and consumption in the US, privileged a particular view
over others. It is an impersonal form of effecting which is so important, because its field
is the visible writing of historical truth and the legitimation of political action.
The effects are worldwide. For its unique position, the US news market has, willingly
or not, effects all over the world. An analysis of governance can give no responsibility to
the networks or the US government for this impersonal rule — except if they oppose any
solution that would change the “rules of the game”, as, for instance, the UN plans to
create an independent satellite news network to make the world autonomous from US
generated news.
2.3. The power of silence
Almost overnight, once the war started, the silence began … I
must report that I’ve never experienced the kind of repression that
set in once the air war started. It was not like McCarthy period that is there were no personal direct attacks on well-known people
of that kind. It was as though a great damp blanket had been laid
over our country with little pinholes for American flags to stick
up into the public air.
Report of the Fund for Free Expression (27 February 1991),
quoted in Grace Paley, “Something about the Peace Movement.
Something about the People’s Right Not to Know”, p. 72.
Self-censorship will be used as a last illustration of the inertial effects of practices coming
from the “sending” side. Before handling the empirical data on various instances of selfcensorship, it is, however, first necessary to conceptualize it within an intersubjective
approach.
The law of non-reactive anticipation
An individualist account of self-censorship is a form of the law of anticipated reactions.
This is the one border case the interactionist power analysis acknowledges. It happens
when behaviour is adapted prior to any overt sanction or threat. Again, the intentionalist
basis of the approach provides the solution for this account. The reaction is the
anticipation of an imputed sanction, should compliance not happen. By implying this
calculus within the mind of the agent which anticipates and consequently adapts, rational
choice can thus reconstruct a behaviour which shows the effects of power despite the
powerful’s passivity. It is a border case for intentionality, because this anticipation is not
strictly speaking intended by the powerful agent.
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An intersubjectivist approach would not deny those instances but also conceives of
self-censorship in a non-individualist way. The starting point is the field or practice in
which such a self-censored behaviour occurs. Such an analysis will liken self-censorship
to the through competence acquired through socialisation to behave in conformity to the
logic of the field and its system of meaning. The taken-for-granted reception of an action
is already a condition for the action itself.
C’est ce sens de l’acceptabilité, et non une forme quelconque de calcul rationnel orienté
vers la maximisation des profits symboliques, qui, en incitant à prendre en compte dans
la production la valeur probable du discours, détermine les corrections et toutes les
formes d’autocensure, concessions que l’on accorde à un univers social par le fait
d’accepter de s’y rendre acceptable.54
Thus, self-censorship occurs not in anticipation of one particular threat or sanction, but
as the socialised and, therefore, already sanctioned behaviour of an agent who agrees to
take part in a practice. In this search for conformity to the practices’ inbuilt sens pratique,
the behaviour can range from the certitude to behave according to the interiorised standards, to the anticipation of a generically negative sanction which condemns the agent to
forms of insecurity, if not outright silence.55
This echoes to a certain extent other non-conscious approaches to power. So does
Steven Lukes’ third dimension include an idea of a form of “preempted” power which
does not need any open control, because the social constituition of interests precludes
“voice”.56 It also echoes a panoptic understanding of power, as it has become popular
through the reading of the Foucault of the 1970s. There, it would be described as
disciplined behaviour where the discipliner is the subject itself. Subjects, exposed to
general visibility, are spontaneously playing the double role of subject and object of
power. The extreme yet unrealised and, hopefully, unrealisable form would consist in a
panoptic system without any external control whatsoever, a permanent state of (self-)
observation, “un interrogatoire qui n’aurait pas de terme, une enquête qui se prolongerait
sans limites dans une observation minutieuse et toujours analytique... une procédure qui
serait à la fois la mesure permanente d’un écart par rapport à une norme inaccessible et
le mouvement asymptotique qui contraint à la rejoindre à l’infini.”57
Shifting from an individualist to an intersubjectivist account of self-censorship implies
thus that intimidation can happen through the very functioning of the field. This
intimidation is a form of governance because it can work only through the dispositions
of an agent58; it is, in other words, mobilising an agent disposition which is then enacted.
54
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, pp. 75-76.
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, pp. 82-83.
56
Steven Lukes, Power. A Radical View.
57
Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir, pp. 204, 228 (quote). In a sense, Foucault describes a situation
where Franz Kafka’s Der Prozeß has become “normalsed”.
58
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, pp. 36/37.
55
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Self-censorship is only the empirically most accessible part of this impersonal form of
power.
Self-censorship through identification
There are different conditions for judging if a case of self-censorship occured. First, it
must be shown that journalists were not seeking or not publishing particular information.
Then, it must be shown that this was not due to reasons of journalistic double-check and
professionality, but out of a sentiment of intimidation. Finally, to show that it was a form
of intersubjective self-censorship, it should be shown that it was not the result of a
conscious choice but that it went “without thinking”; or, in other words, that the action
was in no need of justification.
Generally speaking, it can be said that there were both instances of informationrepression and very one-sided diffusion of information. The best documented discrimination has been published by the media watchdog FAIR. It reports that of 878 sources
used by the network broadcasts to describe the conflict, only one was a representative of
a national peace organisation. Likewise, of the 2.855 minutes of network coverage of the
crisis from 8 August 1990 until 3 January 1991, a mere twenty-nine minutes (or 1 percent
of airtime) dealt with grassroot dissent, even though opinion polls showed that half the
country opposed going to war. Organisations opposing the war, such as the Military
Families Support Network and Physicians for Social Responsibility, were unable to
purchase commercial time. “Refusing airtime to these groups, CNN and network stations
in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington claimed the advertisement were ‘deemed to
be unbalanced’ and ‘against policy’. At the same time pro-war groups such as Citizens for
Free Kuwait — a lobby organized and managed by the public relations firm, Hill and
Knowlton, that was retained by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile — successfully produced
and placed advertisements without hindrance, had access to Congress and even made
presentations to the United Nations Security Council.”59
Maybe the most significant omission were Soviet satellite photographs taken on 11
September and 13 September 1990 which disclosed no evidence of a massive Iraqi buildup in Kuwait, while the Bush administration claimed there were 360.000 Iraqi troops and
2.800 Iraqi tanks in the area at that time. This information just restates previous
assessments, as for instance, by the Israeli secret service.60 It would have been very
important in stopping the escalation because it would have relativised the anti-Saudi threat.
59
David Campbell, Politics without Principle, p. 15. Referring to the FAIR report, Andre Gunder Frank
writes: “Poor Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister who made the management of racist and totalitarian war
propaganda synonymous with his name, would have to start in the kindergarten to learn today’s high-tech
news management of Orwellian newspeak to brainwash a global population via instant satellite television. If
democracy relies on informed people, all semblence of democratic procedures were thrown to the wolves”
(“Third World War: A political economy of the Gulf War...”, pp. 276-77).
60
Chapour Haghihat quotes The Independent from 7 August 1990 for this information. See “Les dessous
de la guerre du Golfe”, pp. 14-15.
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Two US analysts with experience in photographic interpretation found no evidence for the
presence of an Iraqi force even 20 percent at large as the one the administration claimed
was in place. They observed no Iraqi tent cities for troops, no tank congregations and no
Iraqi planes at a deserted Kuwaiti air force base—all this five weeks after the invasion.
There was no infrastructure such as the water supplies required to service troops, nor any
evidence of movement. Yet, US media attributed little importance to the Soviet photographs. ABC purchased the satellite photos for $US 1.560 in November 1990, but it
declined to run a story based upon them because it did not have an image that covered
southern Kuwait.
This was a strange argument. These other photos existed, but no network purchased
them. At times, the argument was made that the whole thing was made up by this
(private) Soviet agency. But it can be argued that the agency, being new on the market,
would destroy its commercial future if it made a mistake. Finally, a Florida newspaper,
the St. Petersburg Times, purchased the additional photographs, including one of Saudi
Arabia. The story was finally published on 6 January 1991. The Pentagon declined to
explain the discrepancy between the photographs and its own version of events. “After
publication, the national wire services declined to transmit the story, and no other major
newspaper followed upon it.”61
These examples seem to indicate a general mood to stay within the frame of acceptable or legitimate news-reporting already mentioned in the previous section. Having
become the co-producer of the “logistic” reality meant, in turn, that the military and the
journalists’ view became at points nearly symbiotic. This was certainly encouraged by the
military, as for instance when the Inmarsat satellite telephones appeared in the pools of
journalists. The military warned that their use could be giving signals to the Iraqis which
would make them recognisable. Journalists much limited their use.62 But the question to
what extent this increasing mutual identification affected behaviour and coverage is not
limited to conscious attempts by the military to forge an environment most suitable to the
development of such a symbiosis. It is not only an issue of indirect institutional power.
The issue of identitification has to be conceptualised by the acceptance of a system
of meaning, by the journalists’ attempt to “fit in”. “[T]he remarkable facet of this system
was not the number of pool pieces which were censored but the number which were
not.”63 The result was a coverage where military and journalists’ understanding of their
reality fused. Symbols, interpretations became increasingly interchangeable and mutually
feeding. As with the TV journalists in the US, the news reporter on the spot became
trapped. Not only conscious adaptation but a piece-meal internalisation occured. The
empirically revealing point is that when the end of the conflict introduced a temporal
distance, journalists realized this pressure and their “self-evident” reporting.
61
62
63
David Campbell, Politics without Principle, p. 61.
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 58.
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 55.
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For journalists to resist this pressure meant not only courage but also the capacity to
distance themselves from the “normal” view. More independent stances which questioned
the weapons-eye view of the conflict were not only propagandistically attacked, but
honestly disbelieved, as witnessed by Peter Arnett whose report on the bombing of the
milk-powder factory earned him nearly McCarthyist reactions.
Robert Fisk has been one of the few to realise relatively early both the extent of the
identification and the effect on the production of news.
The unquestioned nature of our covrage of this war is one of its most dangerous facets.
Many of the American pool dispatches sound as if they have been produced by the
military, which, in a way, they have. For the relationship between reporter and soldier
here is becoming almost fatally blurred.64
3. Conclusion: Social contracts, whether stabilised abroad or not
This chapter analysed the interrelation between practices. Here, power phenomena can be
understood as systematic effects of this interrelation, seen either from the receiving
practices’ side in the systematic disturbance of legitimation practices; or seen from the
sending side as the (inertial) spill-over effects of the inner processes of one practice.
It attempted to analyse Iraq’s fuite en avant, its precipitation into the Gulf Conflict,
as the last instance of an endemic political legitimacy crisis in Arab societies. The
interaction of the state-building pressures of international society with particular statesociety processes in Arab societies have produced a political culture which is always
articulated with reference to the “West” and has not been able to find an equilibrium. On
the “receiving” side, legitimation is systematically questioned, the underlying practices
weakened. By analysing which dispositions these legitimatory practices have created the
analysis of governance shows the social construction of Iraqi options.
The study of the spill-over effects of US practices, the tacit power of the US, focused
on the reproduction of a US identity practice in need of adaptation with the demise of the
traditional danger/enemy. Indeed, the Second Gulf War can be seen as a moment in the
practices’ attempt to construct a substitute to the Cold War threat. This inertia of US
foreign policy practice after the end of the Cold War has been analysed by Realists as
well, when the Bush administration evoked “fears of a return to the old world as the
justification for maintaining a role that had been forged in response to the necessities
arising from the cold war.”65 This paradox appears less as such, if one conceives it as
the representation of a “new world order” which is meant to reproduce US identity and
established practices. It is very revealing when they write that
nor was it clear that the Bush administration would itself be content with a foreign
policy whose principal function was that of providing the reassurance expected of a
64
65
Robert Fisk, The Independent, 6 February 1991.
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 26.
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Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
custodial role. In the months preceding the gulf crisis the administration often seemed
less persuaded by its own arguments on the need for maintaining continuity of role and
policy. What it seemed sure of was the need, rather than the reasons for the need.66
But Realism’s individualist approach conceives it as a paradoxical or wrong choice, at best
as a unreflected habit that is irrationally kept in times where the environment has changed
(as all the generals that fight the last war); an instance of North’s path dependence. It does
not conceive it as the inertial effect of the reproduction of a field whose legitimacy is
linked up with a specific construction of reality. Whereas it is not part of a Realist power
analysis, it is part of an analysis of governance for the practice’s capacity to impose the
principles of the construction of reality and thereby attributes legitimacy for those actions
done in concordance with the practices.
The final illustration of the construction of reality, spill-over effects and legitimation
processes concerned the field of the production of information. The “constraints” of commercial news production and the internalised discipline of self-censorship contributed to
the perception of the war where the eyes of the soldier and the journalist often became
interchangeable. Non-critical dispositions were empowered to such an extent that
journalists afterwards questioned how it could have happened. Warfare appeared as a
rational reaction to a perceived threat and thus to legitimate US (and allies) policies.
Independently of the fact if it were so, this legitimation process is an important moment
of the analysis of governance.
It was taken up in this section which looks at border-transgressing effects of practices,
because the particular international organisation of the field of information privileges the
US view. Practices of self-censorship might be inscribed into a particular field but the
truth they construct commands a wider audience.
66
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 26.
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DOI: 10.2870/47026
13
Governance through collective memory:
just war tales and the World War II script
This chapter handles the third facet of governance which is concerned with practices’
capacity to mobilise and reproduce dispositions within a given field. It will touch the way
collective memory mobilises existing dispositions, be they actions or perceptions, and how
those dispositions will be reproduced. First, a section will clarify the concepts of collective
memory and symbolic power, and their place in the study of governance. Then, a short
introduction to metaphorical forms of legitimation will be followed by the way in which
the World War II script biased the understanding and action during the Second Gulf War.
As in the previous chapter, an intersubjective analysis of governance does not only
ask what concepts of power can tell us about the Second Gulf War, but what the (realworld) problematisation of the Second Gulf War tells us about tacit and open legitimacy
struggles within established practices, exemplified by US foreign policy/identity, and
IR/IPE analysis. The illustration will be limited to the Western side.1 It will show how
symbols evoked particular dispositions for the understanding of the Second Gulf War as
an anti-appeasement crusade, and for US intransigent action during the conflict.
1. Symbolic Power or the ritualised mobilisation of collective memory
How can symbols have power? True, we speak of “powerful symbols” in everyday
language. Yet, it is a very elliptic expression.
1
Saddam Hussein was, of course, also guided by collective memory. The allied presence in Saudi Arabia,
which has the major sacred places of Islam, evoked the Crusades. The attempt to control primary resources
echoed colonialism. It certainly echoed various prior humiliations that the Western world was perceived to
have inflicted to the Arab-Islamic world. See Claudia Schmid, Lokale, regionale und internationale Dimensionen des Golfkonfliktes, pp. 44-47; Jean Leca, “Aux origines de la crise: le discours des acteurs”, pp. 45-48.
279
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The individualist relational approach would conceive the power of symbols as a
shorthand for linguistic or cultural tools on which an agent can draw as a power resource.
Taking into account the value system of the contenders in a power contest, symbols would
evoke particular understandings and reactions that, in turn, would change the behaviour
in the direction preferred by the symbol-user. When peace-movements evoked the danger
of Vietnam, they tried to influence the Bush administration in favour of a non-military
response. The other way round, repeatedly calling Bush a “wimp”, was a powerful device
for those who wanted him to stay firm against aggression.
And, as usual, these attempts are not necessarily successful. Bush was called a
“wimp” by those who wanted to denigrate him - but who often were also exactly those
who aspired to avoid war. There are at least three ways to explain this apparently irrational behaviour. First, they did not know that it could foster a more pro-war posture.
Second, they did it in the context of another front, namely domestic politics (and the midterm elections), where the delegitimation of Bush was achieved by this claim, even if
linkage with foreign policy, the Second Gulf War, was activating a behaviour less in
concordance with their preferences. In other words, it would be a multiple game on different “tables” with different stakes. Finally, they were lying about one of their aims. They
really acquiesced in the war although for electoral reasons they ran on a more peaceful
ticket. These are the three typical ways to resolve the power puzzle: unawareness of
linked, but clashing means-ends relations in different domains; multiple preferences; and
coherent rationality given by looking at “real” preferences.
In this relational approach, “power” derives from the capacity to get one’s will done.
Not the symbols, but the agents using them, have power. The elliptic sentence of “powerful symbols” means that particular resources (are known to usually) resound in the valuesystem of the recipient. “Powerful symbols” is used similarly to “powerful weapons”. The
following approach will take a Weberian Verstehen analysis a bit further, in particular in
the conceptualisation of collective memory.
1.1. “Belief systems” and collective memory
International Relations has not been unaware of the issue of collective memory, or the
way the interpretation of reality can be part of policy-making and analysis. Foreign policy
analysis developed a subfield on the impact of belief systems, widely conceived, on
decision-making. Applied to particular statesman, or to particular crises, or to both, their
cognitive maps or operational codes are analysed as “filters” which select and process
information and enframe decision-making. Spurred by unexpected behaviour of statesmen,
belief systems provided a further explanatory variable. The rational choice approach
provided the background for the definition of logical puzzles to which psychological
models provided answers and policy recommendations.
From its psychological origins, the literature on belief systems has moved to include
sociological approaches. Partly this stems from the problem of linking individual belief
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systems with decision-making outcomes which are generally group-processed.2 One way
would be to follow the research programme outlined by Graham Allison, who points to
the possible extension of his three models by a cognitive fourth model.3 Cognitive
approaches could also be supplemented by a neo-institutionalist solution where socialized
sets of values might turn decision-makers into role-players.4 The other solution is to leave
the individualist account altogether and to refer to sociological/anthropological studies,
where a “belief system is a set of ideas that transcends the individuals who are committed
to it.”5 Positing a belief system which “can be said to have a life of its own… does not
deny the existence of private belief systems which are influenced by psychological rather
than social processes”6 implies a shift of the analysis toward the maintenance and evolution of belief systems, rather than on their punctual impact on individual cognitive
processes in times of crises. Hence, the analysis of belief systems can show them as
legitimatory devices and thus as part of a power analysis.7 An analysis of governance
treats the “lessons of the past” as constructivist and legitimatory devices which appear to
the decision maker as “an implicit view of where history is ‘naturally’ or ‘automatically’
leading.”8 A constructivist approach does not show “how a belief system can filter
‘reality’ in limited ways, but … the extent to which ‘reality’ itself is symbolically
constructed by beliefs.”9
If belief systems are operationalised this way, they are perfectly compatible with an
analysis of governance through collective memory.10 Analysing the Falkland/Malvinas
War, Michael Dillon operationalises belief systems as the language and beliefs of the
British defence culture. In times of a crisis, agents challenged to interpret and to act to
unexpected events, appropriate the symbolic inheritence of a belief system to make sense
of the world. Not only the Margaret Thatcher, but also Parliament and the media
2
Steve Smith, “Belief Systems and the Study of International Relations”, in Richard Little and Steve
Smith (eds) Belief Systems and International Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 31.
3
Graham T. Allison, The Essence of Decision, p. , refers to John Steinbrunner’s work, later published
as The Cybernetic Theory of Decision (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974).
4
Steve Smith, “Belief Systems and the Study of International Relations”, p. 32 envisages such a solution.
5
Richard Little, “Belief Systems in the Social Sciences”, in Richard Little and Steve Smith (eds) Belief
Systems and International Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 40.
6
Richard Little, “Belief Systems in the Social Sciences”, p. 43.
7
John MacLean, “Belief Systems and Ideology in International Relations: a Critical Approach”, in
Richard Little and Steve Smith (eds) Belief Systems and International Relations, p. 76.
8
See the lessons of the past school as presented by Steve Smith, “Belief Systems and the Study of
International Relations”, p. 25.
9
Michael Dillon, “Thatcher and the Falklands”, in Richard Little and Steve Smith (eds) Belief Systems
and International Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 168.
10
For a similar conceptualisation of “everyday taken-for-granted ‘stock of knowledge’ of a society”, see
James A. Aho, “Heroism, the Construction of Evil, and Violence”, in V. Harle (ed) European Values in
International Relations (London: Pinter Publications, 1990), pp. 15-28. For its discussion with reference to
the Second Gulf War, see Heikki Patomäki, “Poetry, Just Law and Oil in the Gulf Crisis. A study of the Role
of Metaphors and Moral Narratives in World Politics” (paper presented at the Inaugural Conference of the
Pan European Association of International Relations, Heidelberg, 16-20 September 1992), pp. 47-48, 51.
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mobilised their common property of symbols, in particular the Churchillian rhetoric of
World War II. “Sharing a common language and resorting to it independently in the first
instance, they soon found themselves investing the crisis with the same sentiments and
saying the same things about it. Mrs Thatcher’s response was thus reflected in that of
other opinion leaders and found widespread support in opinion polls. Her message was
amplified in the process.”11
This does not mean that a more sociological approach excludes cognitive approaches,
but that they approach them with different meta-theoretical assumptions. Therefore, an
intersubjective and constructivist approach could refer to the agent level only after the
analysis of the respective practices in the form of the enactment of particular dispositions,
starting already from the general interpretation of events. The psychological factor would
be a supplementary feature that cannot be studied apart from the cultural context; the
focus would be on the reproduction of collective memory and not on individual decisionmaking. To avoid misunderstandings between these different theoretical and empirical research programmes, in the following the expression “belief systems” refers to a cognitivebehavioural approach and “collective memory” to an intersubjective-constructivist one.12
The two approaches differ with regard to an analysis of power. In the cognitivebehavioural approach, belief systems are conceived as independent causes for the
explanation of decisions. They supplement power or its distribution as causal factors
within the context of decisions. Belief systems might have “powerful” effects, but they
are not part of a power analysis, except indirectly if they are targeted by propaganda. In
an intersubjective approach, the way collective memory is created, mobilised and reproduced is always part of an analysis of governance. Whereas an individualist approach
sees these factors as puzzles to be randomly assessed, the intersubjective approach
conceives them as systematically effecting, and hence to be necessarily included in a
dyadic power analysis. Indeed, taking power seriously, at least since Steven Lukes’ third
dimension, implies a shift away from decision-making studies, whether supplemented by
cognitive approaches or not.
1.2. Governance through collective memory
The conceptualization of “symbolic power” will therefore not rest upon the established
approaches of belief systems. Symbols can, then, be seen as part of the collective memory
of the practice. They acquire their “power” by their effect on the legitimation of the very
practices they respond to, whether challenging or not. Consequently, the approach takes
up the question why particular symbols are believed to be powerful, and others not, and
11
Michael Dillon, “Thatcher and the Falklands”, pp. 178-79.
Verbeek claims that sociological approaches only with difficulty arrive at “insightful empirical
analysis”. Yet, this assumes empirical questions derived from an individualist decision-making research
programme. For his plea to restrict “belief systems” to individual attributes, see Bertjan Verbeek, AngloAmerican Relations 1945-1956. A comparison of neorealist and cognitive psychological approaches to the
study of international relations (Florence: European University Institute, unpubl. PhD, 1992), pp. 82-84.
12
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does not leave it to behaviourally “revealed” effects. The choosers are not the focus of
analysis (which does not preclude their ontological status), but the way choice is thought,
identified and conducted within practices.
This does not mean that there is a oppressive “structure” which leaves no choice to
the individual. This would be an objectivist structural approach. On the contrary, there are
always an infinitude of different linguistically produced symbols.13 But not all of them
have the same legitimatory effect. To approach it requires first an analysis of the practices
in which the agent is part and then the way they are linked up. By looking at practices
and their shared system of meaning, one can at least partly understand how preferences
and interests are formed and how action in accordance with these expectations are tacitly
honoured attributing ritually legitimacy to the agent, and thus indirectly to the entire
practice. To refer to Britain’s glorious past not only interprets particular events, it also
reproduces British defence culture and legitimates Thatcher’s action, willingly or not.
Another difference from a rational choice approach lies in the identification of
collective memory. The rational choice approach assumes that there is a possible
identification between the observer and the agent. A constructivist approach assumes the
two to be responding to different practices, and thus not to be subsumable to each other.
Therefore, the intepretation of the value-systems must include a self-reflective analysis of
the observers’ audience within their academic (or public, or political) community. This
distinguishes the observer from the participant agent. Whereas the participants in the
practice of the international society of statesman refer implicitly and through their actions
to the practice of which they are part, IR observers must construct within their own
respective practice both levels, action and knowledge. Therefore, the analysis will always
refer to two kinds of collective memories, the one on the level of action, the other on the
level of observation.
1.3. Assessing collective memory: myth, script, symbol, and metaphor
It is through their power to merge diverse perceptions and beliefs
into a new and unified perspective that symbols affect what men
want, what they do, and the identity they create for themselves.
Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action, p. 6.
A more precise introduction into the concepts of symbol, metaphor, and ritual might help
to clarify how collective memories are understood and studied in the following.
Let me start with one word which I will try to use only very seldomly, namely
“myth”. The first reason is that it has strong connotations of something which is known
to be wrong, a kind of psychological disturbance that hinders the agent from acting
rationally. This concept is least useful for a study of governance because it takes for
granted exactly what should be studied: the production of (legitimate) truth and rationality.
13
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 20.
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Admittedly, there are usages more cogent to a power analysis. Thus, Mircea Eliade
conceives myths as telling about an original (and originating) situation, where the time
reference is deleted. This return to a “sacred” time consitutes a break with normal temporality. Telling a myth is the reactualisation of this atemporal moment during which the
told events have taken place. The myth is a passage point to this atemporal time, it
symbolically abolishes the present time frame. In traditional societies, for Eliade, established rituals reactivate myths and thereby regularly introduce both this aspiration for the
eternal and, at the same time, the distance towards the limits of daily life.14 Interesting
here is the mobilisation of myths in collective memory and their “powerful” effects.
Similarly, Raoul Girardet’s study on political myths also stresses Georges Sorel’s approach
which is concerned with the organizational effects of myths understood as an “ensemble
lié d’images motrices” stimulating human energies.15
But, and this is the second reason why the concept of myth will be sparingly used,
myths refer to very old narratives stemming from a supposedly common archaic or at least
“original” experiences. I do not deny the interest of similar approaches,16 but will only
touch it with reference to the US myth of the frontier. Otherwise, my concern has been
with historically much closer memories, as they were visible in the Gulf War, namely the
World War II memory in the US and the Vietnam syndrome. Although these memories
are certainly using particular images which are of longer date, as the myths of conspiracy
(fascism, fundamentalism), the Saviour (US) and the golden age (new world order), I will
concentrate less on the structural similarities with older myths. Rather, focusing on
practices of legitimation, the analysis touches particularly the political dispositions
(interpretations and actions) that are mobilized through them. In accordance with usual
terminology, I will refer to the layers of collective memory, which are linked to particular
events, such as World War II, Vietnam and others, as “scripts”.17
What indicates the existence of such scripts? How can scripts link up past with
present events? This touches two other concepts, namely symbols and metaphors.
Symbols, as used here, will be understood as a patterning perception and interpretation,
and, analytically speaking, both as an indicator and a trigger of a specific mobilized script.
They stands for something more, they epitomise it. Metaphors, on the other hand, will be
used as those symbols that allow the passage from one script to the other.18 To compare
14
Mircea Eliade, Images et symboles. Essais sur le symbolisme magico-réligieux (Paris: Gallimard, 1952),
pp. 73-77.
15
Raoul Girardet, Mythes et mythologies politiques (Paris: Le Seuil, 1986), pp. 13-14, 179.
16
For a very stimulating way of using such a structuralist account in IR, see Isabelle Grunberg,
“Exploring the ‘myth’ of hegemonic stability”, International Organization, vol. 44, no. 4 (Autumn 1990), p.
451 (for the methodology) and passim.
17
The concept “script” has the disadvantage of evoking something which is physically written down,
whereas it should stand for a particular way of telling a story which is consistently reinscribed into collective
memory, if not forgotten. As a general rule, I use already coined terms and hesitate to add my own terminology to the already exploding conceptual dictionnary.
18
Strictly speaking, metaphors are all those verbal images that allow the passage from one semantic field
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Saddam Hussein with Hitler is an analogy. To use this analogy evokes the glorious World
War II script as a tool for understanding of the new event, the invasion of Kuwait. As
such, “Hitler” functions as a symbol for this script. By recalling the punitive and
preventive “necessities” inscribed into the World War II script, Saddam Hussein is
constructed as a criminal. The passage from (domestic) legal to the (international) political
field is metaphorical and mobilizes the penal logic for dealing with Saddam Hussein.
Such an analysis is not at all new in IR. “Security” has been successfully analysed in
a way similar to the one proposed here, although it was not called a metaphor. Close to
the use of the word symbol here, Ole Wæver starts from calling the label “security” an
“indicator of a specific problematique, a specific field of practice: it is historically the
field where states threaten each other, challenge sovereignties, try to impose their will on
others, defend their interdependencies, etc.”19 Thus, naming something a “security”
problem, i.e. the “securitisation” of an issue, mobilizes perceptions and legitimates actions
of the security field to which the issue has been moved: “By saying ‘security’ a staterepresentative moves the particular case into a specific area; claiming a special right to use
the means necessary to block this development.”20 In this sense, whenever the symbol
“security”, standing for a whole field, is invoked, it refers to and prepares the passage to
the internal logic of that field, as a metaphor in the above terminology. Due to the fact
that the security field legitimates state action, Wæver sees “securitisation” as a selfjustifying act of political elites. Yet, he also notes that the security field is often mobilized
unconsciously even by those that want to oppose these very elites. “… one often gets the
impression of the object playing around with the subjecs — the field with the researchers.
The problematique locks people into talking in terms of ‘security’ and thereby (especially
when they try to work ‘critically’) reinforcing the hold of ‘security’ on our thinking.”21
The security field as a practice creates, mobilizes and reproduces, also impersonally,
thinking and acting dispositions in the field, whose legitimacy is thus tacitly reconducted.
The more the field has a self-confined logic, i.e. the more “autistic” it is, the more its
mobilisation governs action.
This also shows that, empirically, symbols and metaphors are not always easy to
disentangle. Nearly every symbol can become metaphorical in the sense just described.
Yet, there is a difference in focus. Whereas symbols focus on one script, and thus lead
analysis to spell it out in detail, metaphors concentrate on linkages. Hitler has become the
lynchpin for reactivating the World War II script during the Second Gulf War. In the
future, Saddam Hussein will symbolize something else, although he will be symbolically
linked to Hitler and the World War II script which, in its turn, will be changed.
to another. See Francesca Rigotti, Il potere e le sue metafore (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1992), p. 13. Since different
scripts can actually share a common field, my usage is slightly different. My focus is not on the different
semantic backgrounds, but on the different set of dispositions that can be evoked also within one field.
19
Ole Wæver, Securitization and Desecuritization, p. 4.
20
Ole Wæver, Securitization and Desecuritization, p. 7.
21
Ole Wæver, Securitization and Desecuritization, p. 9.
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Thus, the basic starting point of an analysis of symbols and metaphors is the
hermeneutical-constructivist assumption that they influence interpretation and thinking,
indeed that they become inextricably linked with political events and theses. They are part
of the categorisation through which the empirical world is seen. “The name “table” calls
attention to a flat, raised surface suitable for eating and writing but ignores other
properties of the wood and space comprising a table.”22 Symbols simplify the perception
of events and this cognitive economy thereby permits their understanding. “Thought is
metaphorical and metaphor pervades language, for the unknown, the new, the unclear, the
remote are apprehended by one’s perceptions of identities with the familiar. Metaphors,
therefore, define the pattern of perception to which people respond.”23 “Yet this
impressive process of symbolic creation is not self-conscious. Our naive view holds that
linguistic terms stand for particular objects or behavior, and so we do not ordinarily
recognize that elaborate cognitive structures are built upon them.”24 Being tied to the
implicit legitimation of political ideas, either by recalling a shared scheme of interpreting
the world or by evoking a sense of connivance in the public, it is just not possible to
“leave the metaphor” without endangering the legitimacy of these very ideas.25
1.4. Ritual legitimation
la forme par où les productions symboliques participent le plus
directement des conditions sociales de leur production est aussi ce
par quoi s’exerce leur effet social le plus spécifique, la violence
proprement symbolique, qui ne peut être exercée par celui qui
l’exerce et subie par celui qui la subit que sous une forme telle
qu’elle soit méconnue en tant que telle, c’est-à-dire reconnue
comme légitime.
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 171.
Identity and preference formation are affected by symbols and metaphors of the practices’
shared system of meaning. These are not necessarily conscious, indeed they work best if
they are not. They become part of an analysis of governance because they contribute to
the legitimation of existing practices. Edelman goes as far as to say that “conventional
observation and conventional research methods (notably opinion and attitude research)
chiefly tell us which symbols are currently powerful, not what ‘reality’ is. To define the
22
Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964), p. 158.
Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action. Mass Arousal and Quiescence (New York: Academic
Press, 1971), p. 67. In my terminology, “metaphors” in this quote refer more generically to “symbols”.
24
Murray Edelman, Political Language. Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail (New York:
Academic Press, 1977), p. 61.
25
For this argument, see Francesca Rigotti, Il potere e le sue metafore, pp. 17, 188. She calls this mutual
feedback between metaphors and political ideas or interpretations, the “constitutive function of metaphors”.
23
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cognitive effects of symbols as people’s ‘wants’ is to justify institutions and policies, not
to explain their genesis or dynamics.”26
Legitimacy is enacted via “rituals”. This, for the context of IR rather strange concept
needs some explanation. Legitimacy is the basis of authority. It works through the consent
of the participants. This consent is not necessarily consciously given. Authority is tacitly
attributed to those conforming most perfectly to the expectations constructed by the
practice itself. This non-recognition of a tacit consent is the basis of legitimacy.27 This
consent is given prior to those situations where it is mobilised.
La croyance de tous, qui préexiste au rituel, est la condition de l’efficacité du rituel. On
ne prêche que des convertis. Et le miracle de l’efficacité symbolique disparaît si l’on
voit que la magie des mots ne fait que déclencher des ressorts — les dispositions —
préalablement montés.28
The expression “ritual” is used for the following reason. Those participating in a ritual
imitate a pregiven set of actions and thoughts. Their repetition and endorsement of
“common sense” is the presupposition of authority and is only later enacted. Their consent
is symbolically enacted, so to speak. Common practices, such as rituals, which systematically mobilise symbols, are a valuable tool in the social construction of political reality.
Moreover, the word “ritual” is used as an analogy to a traditional ritual which worked
as long as its role remained unseen. Becoming aware of legitimatory mechanisms means
that one becomes aware of a ritualised act. It is like in the tale, where one sees suddenly
the king to be naked. Here it also becomes empirically accessible. No reproduction of a
practice is stable. As already alluded to above, it depends on the similarity between the
situations in which the collective memory and its dispositions were formed and the ones
in which they are actually enacted. Dispositions will tend to ease possible contradictions,
as cognitive dissonances on the psychological level or on the intersubjective level. But
“inertial” perception can become visible and appear, to those outside the “common sense”
of the practice, as unreflected rituals which are blindly reapplied. Thus, the symbols and
metaphors attribute power to those handling them, to the extent the social context is not
perceived to contradict its assumptions29: only then they are “authoritative”.
Political rituals, as well as ritualised analyses of world events, link up a particular way
to see international affairs with emotional attachments. Discourses, theories and actions
are built out of symbols that embody certain views of how the world is constructed.
Rituals charge them emotionally and make them salient. Since they affect the processes
of legitimation, positively or not, they are central to an analysis of governance.
26
27
28
29
Murray Edelman, Political Language. Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail, p. 142.
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 113.
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 133.
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 68.
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It is for this centrality that IR-poststructuralist literature is filled with the reference to
Realist rituals: it is their contention that Realism is less a verified theory and more a
nearly mechanically enacted disposition to see the world — even if the events to which
it is applied do not necessarily confirm it. Often attacked on grounds which make only
sense within the Realist framework of analysis, Realists’ arguments appear tautologically
to the outsider. Yet, whereas these rituals govern Realist discourse, the contenders are
applying outright power: trying to render conscious the ritual is to undermine its
legitimacy, to impede its functioning. If rituals discipline thought, their critiques
undermine it by making the disciplinary devices conscious.
The political debate and decisions during the Second Gulf War took place in this
context. Several scripts were applied to make sense of the new context after the end of
the Cold War. Not only the identity of the major actors but also their ways of interpreting
their history was open to challenge. One way to coopt challenge is to mobilise the
dichotomies and opposing positions of the scripts where the legitimate and the nonlegitimate positions were already fixed. Becoming an isolationist, an idealist, an
appeasement politician and so forth, are pre-established negative roles in which political
arguments have to be shaped in order to be effective, i.e. de-legitimating the other.
1.5. Rituals of power, or the struggle for truth
Political debate is staged before the actors enter the scene. How “effective” this
reinscription of collective memory will be, i.e. how much legitimacy it conveys to actors,
depends not only upon their resource endowment and their skilful use of propaganda, but
also on the capacity of the practice to harmoniously transform past scripts into present
events. Yet agents can influence the choice of scripts and the invention of new symbols.
But why are some rituals enacted, mixing which mobilised scripts and not others?
Political rituals erase as much history from our memories as they inscribe on them.30 The
layers of collective memory are the necessary source of legitimating (and often contradictory) symbols which, in turn, pattern perception and interpretation. But their multiplicity
does not determine any particular choice of symbols. One could expect those symbols to
be used again that are considered most stable in mobilising support (for or against the
power holders), but they can be mixed and also (not necessarily consciously) invented. It
is certain, for instance, that the faked picture of the lonely oil-polluted cormoran mobilised
images against Iraq, generally of the kind of the ruthless dictator who has no consideration
for any form of life, killing innocent beings — Hitler. This echoed the Iraqi’s gas bombing of the Kurds. Again Hitler. It could, however, become a symbol also of an environmental script.31
30
David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 7.
For historical “ecological crimes”, such as the destruction of forests and land in World War I and the
use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, not to speak of nuclear boms and tests, see the timely reminder
by Fred Halliday, “The Gulf War 1990-1991 and the study of international relations”, Review of International
31
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Through rituals’ effect on constructing options and mobilising bias, their “governance”, they become part of a political struggle themselves. Political debate is largely
structured to win acceptance of a particular categorisation as appropriate for interpreting
events. Legitimation derives from the simplified perception and the emotional attachment
to the symbols and rituals used to win the support: the more legitimate, the more the
debate is perceived in forms of personal values and empirical facts and normalses the
social construction of perception.32 Unfortunately, but quite expectedly, there exist no
general rules which script will be most successful, nor what changes happen to the scripts
and symbols they embody. As a cultural anthropologist concludes, “the processes by
which such changes occur are as yet little understood.”33
2. The metaphorical construction of legitimate action
While the world waited, Saddam Hussein systematically raped,
pillaged, and plundered a tiny nation, no threat to his own. He
subjected the people of Kuwait to unspeakable atrocities—and
among those maimed and murdered, innocent children.
George Bush, “State to the Union”, 29 January 1991
Critics for the left and the right alike were attacking the justifications given by the US
administation for its swift, massive and finally violent reaction. Although their reasons
might be different, they both pointed to the metaphorical derivation of the war justification
from the domestic penal-legal script. The justification of war, and for finding allies,
prominently resorted to UNSC resolutions. But their interpretation was overlaid by the
transfer of a discourse that serves the domestic legal-penal system in a liberal democratic
state. This script mobilised symbols which referred not to war, but to a “depoliticised
process of crime and judicial punishment.”
This single displacement transformed not only the way people judged the political background to the Gulf war, but above all how they perceived it: namely as a criminal act
with juridical consequences. Thus the complex fields of force that constitute global
politics were magically transformed into the image of a world enclosed within a constitutional state order, run according to the liberal theory of law. The metaphor passed
itself off not as a moral truth but as the explanation of actual events.34
There have been attempts to read this metaphorical structuring and legitimation of US
intervention as a purposeful and planned behaviour from the US.35 This is not necessarily
the case. Indeed, the following analysis of this metaphorical justification neither pre-
Politics, vol. 20, no. 2 (April 1994), p. 127.
32
Murray Edelman, Political Language. Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail, p. 25.
33
David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 82.
34
Peter Gowan, “The Gulf War, Iraq and Western Liberalism”, New Left Review, no. 187 (May-June
1991), p. 30, last italics added.
35
Peter Gowan, “The Gulf War, Iraq and Western Liberalism”, p. 31.
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supposes nor necessarily shows US intentionality. This does not mean that the US government was not a competent manipulator the metaphorical heritage of the Western world.
To recall, metaphors have been defined as those lingustic devices that link one script
to another and symbolically help to enact particular meanings in one script to understand
events in another context. It superposes different scripts for this understanding, or even
shifts the interpretation of an event from one script to another. The choice of one or other
metaphor mobilises a disposition of interpretation and action.
One particularly interesting study plays on the different metaphorical systems whose
enactment helped to justify US intervention, a common one shared also by the politicians,
and an expert one.36 The common system is based on the anthromorphising of the state
and the “tale” of the just war, characterised by three actors: one villain, one hero, one
victim. Bush used two versions of this tale. The first was mobilised when the US propaganda referred to the (US) way of life, oil and jobs that were to be secured in the Gulf.
Lakoff calls it “Self-Defence Scenario”. Iraq is, of course, the villain, US the hero and the
US and other industrialised nations are victims of the crime which consists in undermining
international stability, both political and economic. Then, when this argument which traded
oil for life did not really work, a second scenario of the just war tale became more
prominent, “the Rescue Scenario”. Here, Iraq is the villain, Kuwait the victim, the US the
hero, and the crime is kidnap and rape. The “rape” of Kuwait evoked the tale of the
innocent virgin sacrificed to spare the village from the dragon/monster. Importantly, it
mobilises an entire dramaturgy. There will be a hero to save the virgin at the last minute.
The hero comes from afar, he kills the monster, saves the virgin, and gets a reward. The
logic of the tale forbids the thought that the hero came to intrude in other’s affairs or that
he came just to get the reward.37
The expert system is, for Lakoff, based on the “Clausewitz metaphor”, that is the shift
from seeing war as violence to see it in a cost-benefit analysis. “The Clausewitz metaphor
is the perfect expert metaphor, because it requires specialists of the political costs-benefit
calculus. It positively sanctions the use of mathematics, of economics, of theories of
probability, decision-making, and game-theory to render foreign policy rational and scientific.” It is metaphorical because it produces the following meaning transfers. First, it uses
the state-as-person metaphor. Second, it transforms the qualitative effects on human beings
into quantifiable costs and benefits, conceiving political as economic action. Third, it
conceives rationality as source of profits. Finally it sees at war unidimensionally as a
political expedient which, in turn is conceptualized as business.
36
For the following, see George Lakoff, “Metafora e guerra. Il sistema metaforico usato per giustificare
la guerra nel Golfo”, transl. by Alessandro Bugiolacchi (internet-distributed discussion paper, 31 December
1990).
37
“Der Held rettet die Jungfrau. Die Sprache im Golfkrieg” (The hero saves the virgin. The language
during the Gulf War), Interview mit der Wissenschaftlerin Elisabeth Leiss, geführt von Christian Thiel,
Freitag, no. 37 (6-12 September 1991), p. 16.
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Now, and here is in my view the interesting part of the analysis, whereas the common
metaphorical system provides the background for an ethical justification, the second can
only pragmatically justify war. Therefore, the two systems have to be superposed. The
“sacrifices” of the hero in the just war tale must correspond to the “costs” in the
Clausewitz metaphor and the victories of the just war to Clausewitzian benefits.
Yet this double reading is not very stable. There are at least two dissonances. The first
is that in the Clausewitzian reading, Saddam Hussein is a rational calculator. Both for the
World War II script and for the just war tale, however, he might be at best clever, but
never rational in any comparable sense to the West. Otherwise the nuclear argument
would have no impact. The second internal tension lies in the definition of victory. Again,
as with the World War II script, the villain Hussein who has to be punished in the just
war tale, should actually be spared in a cost-benefit analysis. There had to be a clear
winner, the good, whereas the Realist Clausewitzian approach must not maximise victory
but long-term gains, which might contradict (absolute) military victory. Therefore, Lakoff
already thought before Desert Storm, that the least contradictory solution would consist
in getting Iraq out of Kuwait, reinstalling the Emir, weakening Hussein’s regime enough
to reduce his danger to his neighbours, but not too much to provoke those to profit from
it. One way would be to get rid of Hussein to appease the just war tale but to leave his
Ba‘ath regime so as to be in accordance with the Clausewitz metaphor. It is indeed
impressive to what extent this mirrors actual decisions reached well after this analysis.
The effect of this double reading is to mobilise biases for the understanding of the
conflict. The war became not the unleashing of violent forces with unpredictable long-term
political consequences but a technical enterprise to enforce an end, namely the rule of
law.38 Furthermore, the metaphorical reduction of the Iraqi state to Saddam Hussein had
the effect to dehumanise the other Iraqi people. Reduced to accomplices of the villain,
potential misdeeds against them were regretfully but unavoidably, “collateral”. Often
metaphors of animals were used. Especially those referring to vermins or bugs have the
effect of diminishing the restraint to kill. The metaphors evoke dispositions to action:
vermins have to be eradicated, bacteria that attack one’s own body (one’s own nation)
have to be killed. At a Riyadh briefing on 1 February 1991, “Lieutenant-Colonel Dick
White described how the Iraqi move provided a perfect opportunity to hit targets from the
air that had previously been dug in. ‘It’s almost like you flipped on the light in the
kitchen at night and the cockroaches start scurrying there, and we’re killing them.’”39
This use did not appear where there was no need for it. Thus, the German public was
38
Peter Gowan, “The Gulf War, Iraq and Western Liberalism”, p. 31.
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 140. Not that this was done only by the Western coalition.
An Iraqi military communiqué during the Al-Khafji “incident” (Thursday, 29 January 1991) when Iraqi troops
were able to take over a Saudi town at the border with relative ease, which was only taken back by Saudi and
Qatari troops (with massive help by the US) 36 hours later, stated that the “heroic men” of the Iraqi air force
had shot down three of the coalition’s “rats”. Ibid.
39
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asked to take side, but not to take part in the war. The use of such metaphors, well
enshrined in Nazi propaganda, would have rather repelled German public opinion.40
To recapitulate: what does interpretation of the the second Gulf War tell us about the
reproduction of practices and their legitimation? Legitimacy is also metaphorical
constructed. Metaphorically speaking, metaphors are powerful. They can, as we have just
seen, even kill. They contribute to the mobilisation of particular dispositions to understand
and act, and reproduce the context for assessment of legitimate action. The use of the just
war “tale” not only justifies the intervention, but legitimated the fact that thinking about
the intervention should be done in terms of the just war debate. The just war debate with
its pre-established categories for judging the justification to go to war takes place in this
context. It will be dealt with in the next chapter.
3. Who/what “kicked” the Vietnam syndrome?, or: the Second Gulf War
script as Vietnam’s translation into World War II
When President Bush used the Hitler analogy, was it propaganda or was he behaving
within the logic of the political field that established the successful rules to be followed
to gain legitimacy for US intervention? Once the analogy seemed to work, was he and the
public, including the observers, “governed” by the symbol, influenced to render consonant
present with past (interpreted) events? In other words, was Bush preparing a spectacle to
trap the imagination of the public, or were both trapped in the mobilised memories?
In Part IV, we have seen that the Bush administration, among others, did use extensively propaganda. Yet, this propaganda could only work, as argued in this chapter, with
reference to the so-called “lessons of the past”, that is the dispositions provided by the
collective memory of political practices, academic and practical. “Not all rituals that
endow political arrangements with legitimacy are the product of conscious design… Although people do consciously manipulate rituals for political ends, they also sometimes
invent, revise or revigorate ritual forms that have political effects without being conscious
of what those effects will be.”41
This means that besides the direct propagandistic power attempts, the Second Gulf
War recycled many long-established images that recalled the glorious moments to be
emulated, such as World War II, and the negative ones to be exorcised, as the Vietnam
War. It is impossible not only for the actors at the time, but also for their interpreters, to
stay apart from the legitimatory devices inscribed therein. For instance, Vietnam
“showed”, at least in the US conservative reading, the negative impact of the press on
warfare. “Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome” meant also de-legitimating any press critique,
attributing domestic responsibility for American soldiers dying on the front. This needs
not to be done intentionally. Collective memory itself, once mobilised constructs options
and mobilises particular biases not reducible to the direct control of those who enact them.
40
41
“Der Held rettet die Jungfrau. Die Sprache im Golfkrieg”, p. 16.
David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, pp. 41-42.
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DOI: 10.2870/47026
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The sheer repetition of the argument for other reasons, as for instance the reconfirmation
of one’s threatened identity patterns after the end of the Cold War, can have this effect,
willingly or not. Prepared this way, the press will be not seen as the defender of public
opinion (for which there exists, for example, the Watergate script), but as a potential stab
in the back.
It was the degree to which virtually all information upon which opinions and perceptions, great and small, could be formed about the Gulf war was informed or influenced
by media-managers operating on the Vietnam-inspired assumption that wars may be won
on the battlefield, but they could also be lost on the domestic front. For critic John
Pilger, the connivance of the media in the creation of this climate of consensus was the
product of a contemptible culture “in which vast amounts of repetitive information are
confined to a narrow spectrum of ‘thinkable thought’.” (Guardian, 7 January 1991)42
3.1. “Lessons” from Vietnam
This will not be another Vietnam. Never again will our armed
forces be sent out to do a job with one hand tied behind their
back. They will continue to have the support they need to get the
job done…
George Bush,
address to the Reserve Officers Association on 23 January 1991
The power analysis of the Second Gulf War has already shown how the avoidance of the
Vietnam syndrome was the organising idea of US politics. The paradox that the most
powerful country in the world, the US, lost the Vietnam war, was reinterpreted to mean
that it would have been won on the field, if it had not been lost at home. The domestic
front with liberals, the press, and so forth, was responsible for the “half-hearted” US
power projection in Vietnam. In the face of more than 500.000 US soldiers in Vietnam,
this seems rather self-deceptive. Yet this does not diminish its grip on collective memory:
it is eagerly believed and avoids the questioning of national pride and identity. “If only
we wanted...”. Apparently half-hearted intervention was to be banned in general: if you
go, go for good. This links the assessment of success with (more or less) complete victory.
If there are no half-hearted interventions, limited ends become only acceptable if they can
be circumscribed enough to allow within their range a full-hearted deployment of means.
Politically speaking, this means that limited ends become a rather tricky political problem,
as seen in the humanitarian interventions in Somalia.
Another lesson that seemed to derive from Vietnam and which was reinforced by the
Carter administration’s unlucky intervention in Iran, and Reagan’s not much better
intervention in Lebanon, was that Third World interventions tend either to become
“quagmires”, in which the intitial effort get lost in the morass of local politics and
strategics, or “escalators” where the initial limited intervention would ineluctably be drawn
42
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 24.
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into a larger conflict.43 Consequently, there were two conditions of war engagement
derived from Vietnam: minimizing US casualties and avoiding protracted war.44
Experienced statesmen, i.e. those to whom such an authority is attributed, have to
learn these lessons of the past. Yet, these scripts are never stable. The Vietnam war was
in that respect always a contested script. The very reduction of the “problem” of Vietnam
to too much timidity on the front of the US, and not to the blind and unreflected application of a Cold War logic, which confounded containment as a means with an end in itself,
is an attempt to preempt such contested readings. The Vietnam “syndrome” is actually
nothing more, but nothing less than the possibility that the entire legitimation of US policy
after World War II, the self-sacrificing containment of world communism, is on shaky
grounds. It is so crucial because it questions some fundaments of US foreign policy selfrepresentation. It is no mere struggle about “semantics”. The “right” rereading of Vietnam
is crucial both to the continuous ex-post legitimation and to the reproduction of established
policies. Legitimation is not a once-and-for-all acquired status even in historical events.
The official attempt of the Bush administration during the Second Gulf War to get rid
of the Vietnam syndrome was only possible if the symbolic space of the Vietnam script
could be filled with something else. The World War II script was increasingly used — to
such an extent as to make one wonder if it did not, in turn, condition many of the choices
the Bush administration made.
The following analysis of the Second Gulf War as a translating device to pass from
Vietnam to World War II is based on the assumption, elaborated in the previous chapter,
that the end of the Cold War has questioned the identity of US foreign policy, and thus,
following Campbell, of the US itself. In times of such reproduction crises, where the
context is perceived as contradicting the originating conditions of a practice, symbolic
reassertion is extremely important. But the implosion of the Cold War was not of the sort
to boost a spontaneous ritualisation through which battles and allegiances get newly
understood and defined. Revolutions often produce the (new) conceptual means for their
understanding: “The rites did not simply express previously existing popular perceptions
of proper political relations and institutions; they also played a major role in creating these
perceptions and ideals.”45
Nothing of this sort happened. The Second Gulf War eventually guided both politicians and observers back into known territories. To get rid of Vietnam and the special
context of a war, with all its self-disciplining features (see previous chapter), appealed to
many scripts. In the following, we take the US frontier myth and World War II which
have been the most prominent for the actors involved in the conflict.
43
For this analysis conducted in the context of the Second Gulf War, see Lawrence Freedman, “Escalators
and quagmires: expectations and the use of force”, International Affairs (London), vol. 67, no. 2 (Fall 1991),
pp. 5-41.
44
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 85.
45
David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 160.
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DOI: 10.2870/47026
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295
3.2. The mobilisation of the US “frontier”
For all the effort to draw a contrast between the two experiences of conflict, however,
many of the features of the war in Vietnam resonated with the campaign against Iraq. In
times of national crisis, even if self-amplified, there is a return to symbols that are
fundamental for the identity of any practice. Most notable in this regard was the
reproduction of the US myth of the frontier which generally refers to the always insecure
and threatened borders of US’ own identity. These borders demarcate “civilisation” from
“barbarism”, the (colonising) American from the (native) Indian, the home from the
“foreign” both in land and people. The whole war was about “whether we live in a world
governed by the rule of law or by the law of the jungle.”46
Already during the Vietnam war, enemy territory was referred to as “Indian territory”;
and the same was said of Iraq. “And just as the United States had, under the guise of
civilized behaviour, perpetrated unspeakable acts against Indians and Vietnamese—acts
that included the mutilation of victims’ bodies as spoils of war—so too has it been alleged
that U.S. servicemen in the Gulf collected the severed limbs of Iraqi soldier as
trophies.”47 This image of the Indian/barbarians and the frontier was also taken up with
regard to the USSR when a news reporter for America’s NBC network commented on late
February 1991 that the Soviets had ‘gone off their reservation’ with their efforts to broker
a diplomatic solution to the First Gulf war.48
It would be fallacious to ascribe whatever deep-seated or hidden intention to these
actions and linguistic slips which “come to one’s mind” both on the level of the acting
agent and of the acting observer. Yet it shows that when agents justify and interpret their
actions they often refer to symbols in collective memory that present a picture of the
world which is emotionally so compelling as to be beyond debate.49
The Gulf discourse, the myth of the fontier, and the concomitant war can thus be seen
as a ritual. As President Bush declared after the war, “America rediscovered itself during
Desert Storm.” As Campbell notes, “this understanding of the conflict seems to satisfy a
widely felt desire.”50 But once they are mobilised they govern further attempts to make
sense of the increasingly threatening events: “The mythology of the frontier achieves, in
this sense, more than mere description. It provides also the prescription for action. It
mandates that to ensure the survival of ‘civilisation’ the forces of ‘barbarism’ have to be
constantly repelled if not overcome.”51 The consequences of this need for a founding
moment as a ritual for redefining identity and policy drives the entire US self-interpretation and action in the Second Gulf War.
46
George Bush at a Republican fund-raising luncheon on 15 October, quoted in Jean Edward Smith,
George Bush’s War, p. 193.
47
David Campbell, Politics without Principle, p. 22.
48
David Campbell, Writing Security, p. 189, n. 42.
49
David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 101.
50
David Campbell, Politics without Principle, p. 22.
51
David Campbell, Writing Security, p. 165.
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3.3. The Hitler analogy in the World War II script
One of the most interesting phenomenon of this war was the repeated assessment that it
was a “defining” moment. According to Brent Scowcroft, it is “the first test of our ability
to maintain global or regional stability in the post Cold War era.”52 Bush conceives it
in these terms in his article in Newsweek from 26 November 1990. Besides the obvious
impact on creating an atmosphere for extraordinary measures, such as warfare, it is
impossible to exclude that actors, in fact, believed in a special historical tide in the “postWall” period. After all, Bush was deciding on a war where the US was expected to have
heavy casualties. Only presupposing completely ruthless behaviour would invalidate the
contention proposed here that the established practices of the Cold War were in a crisis.
A crisis happens exactly when the reproduction of established practices and their tacit
legitimation become visible. One might even suppose that the Bush administration was
willing to accept a change of US foreign policy practice. But its routines were encouraging a perception of the world which disposed to construct substitutes for the USSR.
Therefore, an analysis of governance would privilege less the question of oil security
for the understanding of US reaction as presented in chapter 7, than the Cold War dispositions, where the Second Gulf War eventually came to refer to the World War II script
of Hitler, appeasement, and of vital interests. It became an opportunity to keep established
procedures and institutions of the Cold War.53 The established language of the Cold War
mobilised through the Second Gulf War set off a self-legitimating dynamic which conditioned the very conceiving of a change and the definition of options. The World War II
script has furthermore the advantage of being a transnationally shared collective memory.
Again, even if the Bush administration had used it for prompting domestic support, it
certainly resounded “powerfully” with its European allies. Replace “US” for “Britain” in
the next quote, and the Falkland War becomes legitimated as the Second Gulf War
Throughout the Western World and beyond there is a realisation that if this dictator succeeds in unprovoked aggression other dictators will succeed elsewhere. We are fighting
a battle against that type of aggression, and once again it is Britain that is fighting it.54
The methodological problem is that it is difficult to disentangle the working of collective
memory on the acting statesman and the observer. Often, secondary texts mix the two
levels. Indeed Realism derives its strength from the “naturalness” from which statesmen
and observer share a common view because they apparently share a common history. The
remainder of this section will privilege the level of the statesman, leaving the reconstruction of the (academic) observer to the next chapter.
52
quoted in Elizabeth Drew, “Letter from Washington”, The New Yorker, 24 September 1990, p. 106.
For this interpretation, see also Mary Kaldor, “Nostalgie a ovest”, Il Manifesto, 13 January 1991.
54
Margaret Thatcher before the House of Commons, 1982, quoted in Michael Dillon, “Thatcher and the
Falklands”, p. 177.
53
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Hitler-Stalin-Hussein: the mobilisation of the ultimate enemy
Yes, I felt and properly stated that Saddam was like Hitler.
President George Bush,
U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, p. 174.
Munich and anti-appeasement became the symbolic background for waging the public
opinion, but also the ritualised return to the heroic war and after-war period where totalitarianism was resisted. This parallel reading of the post-war-period and the post-Wallperiod was indeed impressive, as if the US was afraid of lowering its guard against the
timeless and ubiquitous threats to its security, widely and variously defined. This inertial
effect of established policy practices returned to the origin: the anti-Hitler and implicitly
the anti-Stalin war. The Hitler-Stalin link is most interesting because it upholds the Second
World War posture into the Cold War, anti-totalitarianism being its glue. It is not unusual
to see regular shifts between Hitler and Stalin, for instance, in the analysis of one observer
who uses a “natural” analogy with Hitler, after a long description of Hussein’s “personality cult”, his way of dealing with domestic enemy’s, the little foreign experience and
distorted view of the West, and his purging of the army (300 generals relieved and 15 shot
by 1982), all duly compared to Stalin.55 Consequently, the political symbol of containment, as opposed to appeasement, can cover both the Second World War was a fullfledged war and the Cold War. This fusion is always open to critique and needs
permanent reinscription.
From the very beginning, the lynchpin of the symbolic system became Adolf Hitler.
There have been many conspiracy theories about a presumed US trap for Iraq (see chapter
14). Focusing on the mobilised World War II script diminishes the credibility of such
explanations, which are often ex-post rationalisations. It might even be argued that the
World War II script could explain partly the radical turn-around of US policies.
On 2 August (US time), i.e. just after the invasion, on his plane to Aspen, Colorado,
where President Bush was going to meet the British Prime Minister Thatcher, he phoned
both Egypt’s President Mubarak and Jordan’s King Hussein and agreed to leave them two
days to find an Arab solution.56 Yet, already the next day, the US had embarked on an
intransigent position. On 4 August, the Washington Post and The New York Times had
front pages about an immediate attack of Saudi Arabia — all leaked by the administration.57 What happened? At their meeting in Aspen, Thatcher used all her persuasiveness
to convince Bush to resist forcefully, explicitly recalling Munich 1938.58 She is claimed
to have said the next day, “Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly.” Since then,
Bush did everything to make an “Arab giving in” impossible. On 4 August 1990, in
55
56
57
58
Norman Friedman, Desert Victory, pp. 13-20.
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, pp. 64, 70.
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, pp. 73-75.
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, p. 7.
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Aspen Lodge, Camp David, Bush and his close crew of crisis managers decided to push
Arab states intransigence.
What did the President think? According to several participants, Bush insists that he saw
stark parallels between the crisis in the Gulf and the reaction of nations of Europe in
the late 1930s to the threat and bluster of Nazi Germany. The Saudis and the other
nations of the Gulf, Bush told his advisers toward the end of the Aspen Lodge meeting,
had to be persuaded to reject the “appeasement option”.59
Reading in August Martin Gilbert’s The Second World War fortified his resolve with tales
of atrocities committed by SS Death’s Head regiments marching into Poland.60 On 23
October 1990, during a campaign swing through New Hampshire, the President declared
that “I’m reading a book, and it’s a book of history, a great, big, thick History about
World War II. And there is a parallel between what Hitler did to Poland and what Saddam
Hussein has done in Kuwait.”61
With the anti-appeasement option of the Cold War garnished with the analogies of the
Nazi regime, the entire perception of the Second Gulf War became a remake of the liberation of Europe. In his address from 8 August 1990, Bush equates it with the “struggle for
freedom in Europe”. In this speech, where he declared, or rather confirmed, the sending
of US troops to Saudio Arabia, he refers to “Iraq’s tanks [which] stormed in blitzkrieg
fashion through Kuwait in a few short hours”, and could legitimate the sending of troops
to Saudi Arabia not on the basis of evidence, but on the basis of an implicit analogy with
Hitler’s invasion of Sudeten-Czechoslovakia as the prologue to Munich and the Second
World War. “Given the Iraqi Government’s history of aggression against its own citizens
as well as its neighbours, to assume Iraq will not attack again would be unwise and
unrealistic.”62 Against an inherently expansionist force, only counter-aggression works,
“and so the reference to Hitler soon took on a significance of its own.”63 Bush quotes
the analogy officially on 15 August 1990: “A half century ago, our nation and the world
paid dearly for appeasing an agressor who should, and could, have been stopped. We are
not going to make the same mistake again.”64
Although nobody would deny the ruthless nature of Saddam Hussein’s rule, as much
as nobody denies the indifference with which this was usually met in the West, it is more
his aggression against US interests that prompted the Hitler analogy than anything else.
59
U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, p. 72.
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, pp. 2-3. For the reference to Martin Gilbert’s book, see also
U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, p. 174.
61
The New York Times, 24 October 1990, quoted in Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, p. 195.
62
The quotes from the 9 August address are taken from “Excerpts From Bush’s Statement on U.S.
Defense of Saudis”, The New York Times, 9 August 1990, p. A15.
63
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, p. 131.
64
Bush’s speech reported in The New York Times, 16 August 1990, quoted in Jean Edward Smith, George
Bush’s War, p. 133.
60
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There is more continuity than change in American objectives in the Middle East, and
that is why, since the end of World War II, America has discovered more Hitlers there
than any other region. Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s nationalist prime minister, was the
first to be portrayed as Hitler. Then it was Gamal Abdel Nasser’s turn. His book,
Philosophy of the Revolution, was described by the U.S. media, including the New York
Times and the Washington Post, as an Arab equivalent of Mein Kampf. Then Yasir
Arafat was protrayed as Hitler. Most people do not recall that until he made his dramatic visit to Israel … even Anwar Sadat was routinely protrayed as a fascist; allegations
were dredged up of his links with the Nazis.65
The extremly rich symbolic capital of World War II just spinned off in incredible analogies. Its script overlaid the understanding of events. “Like Hitler, the seemingly mad
butcher of Baghdad cowered in his German-built Führerbunker as he directed his almost
Waffen-SS—like Republican Guards to fight to the last man. Whereas Hitler gassed millions of Jews in sealed death chambers and rocketed Allied cities with V-1s and V-2s,
Saddam shot SCUDs against Israel, where Jews sat in sealed rooms wearing gas masks
against chemical warheads made possible by West German-built factories in Iraq…”66
When a story distributed by Interfax reported that Saddam Hussein had had his top air
force commander executed on 24 January 1991, the Iraqi government denied and even the
coalition admitted that it could not verify the news. But the story had been sent out already and the Gulf War got its “nearest equivalent to a Stauffenberg plot.”67 The official
announcement of Desert Storm war was coined in paraphrasing Eisenhower’s famous radio
address on June 6, 1944, when Fitzwater said “The liberation of Kuwait has begun.”68
Acting as the anti-appeaser meant that Bush had emulated Churchill and not
Chamberlain. Expectedly, on his victory speech on 6 March 1991, “President Bush said
that the war must lead to a world, in the words of Winston Churchill, ‘in which the
principles of justice and and fair play… protect the weak against the strong…”69 Taken
away by this world, one writer seems even to prefer Nazi Germany to Iraq:
To pursue the natural (sic!) analogy with Nazi practices, the Republican Guard is reminiscent of the early military wing of the SS, which was Hitler’s personal bodyguard
unit. The expansion of the Republican Guard to an elite fighting force certainly recalls
the creation of the Waffen SS, through the result was much less impressive. The use of
the Republican Guard cadres to preclude mass surrenders by threatening to shoot
soldiers certainly parallels the SS role. There are, of course, differences of degree; a
British analyst observed that Saddam and his government resembled the Nazis “but
without their human warmth”.70
65
Eqbal Ahmad, “Introduction. Potent of a New Century,” in Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck
(eds), Beyond the Storm. A Gulf Crisis Reader (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1991), p. 10.
66
Timothy W. Luke, “The Discipline of Security Studies and the Codes of Containment“, p. 331.
67
Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media, p. 77.
68
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, p. 250.
69
Timothy W. Luke, “The Discipline of Security Studies and the Codes of Containment“, p. 335.
70
Norman Friedman, Desert Victory, pp. 20-21.
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Interaction between scripts and preference formation: the social construction of US
options
Consequently, Saddam Hussein is presented as someone who is potentially not satisfiable
and who wants the complete control of the region. Following the inner logic of the script,
the only real US option was Iraq’s unconditional surrender or war. Any discussion with
the Iraqi government, assuming such had been possible, would have been immediately
suspect to appeasement. It seems that the perception of Saddam Hussein in these terms
reduced the options of the US government. Not because of “objective” constraints, but for
the mobilisation of its foreign policy habitus, the administration was finally pushed to
behave exactly as the “logic of power” of a Neorealist security analysis would expect
them to do: shifts in the global and regional balance of power were confronting a regional
and global hegemon and needed to be sorted out in a war in which the successful
translation of superior US power resources into influence decided in favour of the US.
With the material at hand today, it is impossible to decide if the US, making a rational
calculation of means and ends in global and regional affairs, wanted “surrender or war”
from the beginning, or if the logic of the Second World War script was increasingly
“governing” perception and action of the Western actors in the conflict. It seems that US
preferences and aims expanded during the conflict much in concomitance with the Second
World War-Cold War containment script. The mutual effecting between the script and
foreign policy practice cannot be ruled out. “Once accepted, a metaphorical view becomes
the organizing conception into which the public thereafter arranges items of news that fit
and the light of which it interprets the news. In this way a particular view is reinforced
and repeatedly seems to be validated for those whose attitudes it expresses. It becomes
self-perpetuating.”71
At the beginning, there was the over-riding anti-appeasement symbol. It meant, to
believe President Bush himself on the day of his 8 August speech, the containment of
Iraqi forces at the Saudi border, not necessarily the “roll-back” of Iraqi forces from
Kuwait.72 This tension has been always underlying US containment policies. When the
change in the legitimation of the deployment from oil security to nuclear proliferation
shifted a majority of public opinion in favour of the intervention, the Second World War
script might have taken off. The Iraqi bomb was a symbol that recalled the Manhattan
Project and the ultimate war effort against Germany. From this point, to the unconditional
retreat as a prerequisite for any negotiation was added another US condition: the crisis
would be pursued until a solution for the ABC capacities of Iraq was found. On 25
November 1990, Secretary of Defence Cheney declared that even if Iraq accepted all the
resolutions, the US had to deal with Iraqi sophisticated weapon systems in a way to ask
for more incisive resolutions. This is perfectly logical if Hussein is like Hitler, because
the aim is no longer the containment of an army but the destruction of an irridentist
71
72
Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action. Mass Arousal and Quiescence, p. 72.
U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, p. 93.
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enemy. Secretary of State Baker said on 11 December 1990, that the crisis would only end
after the dismantlement of Iraqi mass destructive weaponry. Thus, attentive observers
could analyse the extension of war aims already before the starting of Desert Storm.73
From here, it is only one step to a strategy of pre-emptive war. Cheney himself declared
on 3 December 1990 to the Senate’s Committee of Military Affairs that it was better to
face Saddam Hussein now with a coalition united and his weapon systems not finished.74
This implies that US war goals expanded beyond the status quo ante to include the
destruction of Iraq or at least of its mass-destruction weaponry. The doubling of armed
forces in the Gulf at the beginning of November already indicated the US resolve for
Desert Storm. This, in turn, made a political solution short of complete Iraqi submission
impossible. This solution became therefore the “nightmare scenario”, a nightmare in
particular for Saudi Arabia: Iraq would retreat with all its forces intact. This would have
meant expensive and permanent stationing of US troops. This became the content of the
anti-appeasement option which was ruled out from the second day of the crisis.
A belief system explanation would reduce this line of analysis to the individual level,
pointing to the cognitive map or belief system of President Bush. One observer is pushed
to describe George Bush as riddled with complexes for being considered a “wimp” and
therefore easily influenced by solicitations like Thatcher’s. Quoting several speeches where
Bush personalised the war, Smith concludes that “it was as if foreign policy had become
presidential autobiography. The crisis became a struggle of will between George Bush in
Washington and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad: … he was proving to himself that he could
stand up to Saddam.”75 Other commentators link it also to the legalist tradition of US
policy-making, where aggression should not pay and which was used in World War II,
which was the time when Bush was politically socialised.76
The governance account stresses instead the increasingly reduced options offered by
the Hitler analogy which mobilised public opinion, feeded back into action/perception
which reinforced, in turn, the disposition to privilege this script. It would also point to the
legitimatory content of the Hitler analogy. If Hussein is like Hitler, than no diplomacy
could have avoided war. Here the Hitler analogy becomes both the guide for politics and
its legitimation. If Hussein were not Hitler, the US could have initialised a policy of
compensation, in harmony with the immediate pre-conflict behaviour. With a Hitler this
is not possible. Within the Hitler story, the unavoidable US war against Iraq appears as
the last attempt of the US to manage and contain expansionist Iraq (to give it time to
73
Arnold Hottinger, “Die Golf-Krise am Rande des Krieges”, Europa Archiv (1/1991), p. 3, and p. 6, n.
6. Strangely, the French Minister of Defence, Jean-Pierre Chevènement seems only to have deduced from the
targets of the air-attacks, i.e. from the 20 January 1991, that the war aim was the destruction of Iraqi military
power. See “Ce qui manque à notre république…”, p. 23.
74
Michael T. Klare, “Obiettivo Iraq. La strategia militare nella guerra del Golfo”, Il Manifesto, 17
February 1991, pp. 6-7.
75
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, pp. 2, 233.
76
Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, pp. 86-87. For the legalist script,
see next section.
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Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
resume reasonableness) and only to strike when there was no alternative. The Second
World War script is most powerful in mobilising consent for a war that the script itself
constructs as unavoidable and thus legitimate.
Once the Second World War script overlaid other interpretation of the events, the
story neatly follows: if Hussein is like Hitler, then Kuwait is Rheinland, then the future
invasion of Saudi Arabia is Czechoslovakia and negotiation is appeasement, then war is
unavoidable. Taking on board the lessons of Vietnam, war had to be fought with little
casualties, and with international blessing so as to avoid the US isolation. All these
options are the “natural” outgrowth of experienced statesmenship.
Therefore, Hussein had to die. The thesis that the US decided to kill Saddam Hussein
with a special bomb the day before the end of the war has immediate appeal.77 The
decision not to go to Baghdad becomes the “natural” debate at the end of the conflict: it
is the most explicit break with the Second World War script. The way it will be analysed
will hence, in turn, influence how the Second World War script will be reproduced
through the Second Gulf War.78
4. Conclusion: A ritualised return to 1945 to overcome the … Arab
Syndrome?
The text of World War II can become a prescriptive code or strategic script, whose subplots, characters, and narrative structure are
continually cited and coded to create policies of collective defense, regional unity, and national security.
Timothy W. Luke,
“The Discipline of Security Studies and the Codes of Containment”, pp. 333-34.
This chapter has shown phenomena of governance that are concerned with practices’ capacity to mobilise and reproduce dispositions within a given field. It showed how metaphors
contribute to the understanding of events and their legitimation. It touched the way layers
of the collective memory mobilised actions or perceptions.
The previous chapter found a conceptual void of US foreign policy practices and the
effects internal readaptation can have on other practices. Perfectly compatible with this
finding, the present chapter has followed how the Second Gulf War symbolically brought
the US back to 1945. In a context of perceived “hegemonic decline”, “this retrowar
rhetoric blended contemporary images of triumph with a rebirth of World War II historical
importance for the United States… The global war against Saddam, therefore, was
everywhere — in school, at the grocery store, in fast-food outlets, on TV and radio — as
77
The U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, pp. 36, claims that the US produced a
special bomb to pierce Saddam Hussein’ armored personal bunker at al-Taji Air base approximatively 15
miles northwest of Baghdad.
78
Timothy W. Luke, “The Discipline of Security Studies and the Codes of Containment”, p. 338.
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303
a total environment, an electronic mantra to refocus the nation’s citizens as truly loyal fans
eager to “kick butt” and “be number one” after being humiliated.”79
Possibly US intransigence, but certainly the legitimacy of its acts were enhanced by
the persistent overlay of these scripts. The mobilisation of the wealth of symbols has
certainly also been done on purpose, but at some point Bush, the public, and the experts
seemed not to think any longer that the Hussein-Hitler and Bush-Churchill analogy were
only metaphorical.
World War II was mobilised to overcome the Vietnam Syndrome, not on the Middle
Eastern front, where the war imitated many features of the Vietnam War80, but at home.
if we can selflessly confront evil for the sake of good in a land so far away, then surely
we can make this land all that it should be,” because even as the troops of Desert Storm
confronted an enemy abroad they accomplished “more than even they may realize …
they transformed a nation at home”81
But maybe it was the “Arab” Syndrome that was being fought against. It is the region
where the US was most humiliated recently, both in Iran (hostages) and Lebanon. It was
to remove the impression that the US was not able to win against the “Arab threat”
(fundamentalists). Again the Hitler symbol is a perfect link between the idea of totalitarianism — Hitler Hussein - and Arab fundamentalism. Although Saddam Hussein had been
himself fighting fundamentalism, this metaphor worked well, especially when Saddam
Hussein invoked the jihad. By symbolically returning to 1945, the Second Gulf War
overlaid the script of the Arab fundamentalist threat.
It is impossible to judge already how the different scripts have been affected by this
mobilisation during the Second Gulf War. The very impression of a “defining moment”
will probably add the Second Gulf War as another layer to the collective memory both
of stateman and of their observers. For this layer, the US by mobilising these scripts,
together with its insitutional power in the coding, trasferring, and interpreting of symbols,
“has asked for, and perhaps even won, the freedom and authority to redefine itself and the
world as a part of the war. Here, Kuwait is the discursive stage for a semiowar of US
identity, purpose and meaning.”82 The extent to which “the US”, in particular “which”
US won in the reproduction of these scripts remains the subject for future analysis of
governance. There, the observers’ interpretations will play a major role.
79
Timothy W. Luke, “The Discipline of Security Studies and the Codes of Containment“, p. 332.
Lawrence Freedman & Efraim Karsh, “How Kuwait was won. Strategy in the Gulf War”.
81
George Bush quoted in Timothy W. Luke, “The Discipline of Security Studies and the Codes of
Containment”, p. 335.
82
Timothy W. Luke, “The Discipline of Security Studies and the Codes of Containment”, p. 337.
80
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European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
14
Ritualised understanding:
Realist puzzle-solving
Not only actors but also observers mobilised dispositions to understand the Second Gulf
War. In that respect, the competent analyst is as important as the statesman in shaping
“the lessons” of the event, i.e. what should be kept in collective memory. For the practice
of academics, the analysis of governance returns to Kuhn’s concept of paradigm as a form
of Weltanschauung that provides the prism for the construction of the event, the research
framework, the legitimate way to answer them and, finally, the particular “unexplained”
puzzles.
By applying the third facet of governance analysis to the practice of the observer, the
present chapter breaks even more with a unilinear presentation of the conflict. It
introduces explicitly a level of self-reflexivity. Indeed, as a case illustration, the prior
individual power analysis of the Second Gulf War will be in itself analysed as an instance
of governance. Taking power seriously supplements the Neorealist research agenda not
only because it shows power phenomena neglected by Neorealist power analysis, but also
because it shows Neorealist power analysis, as any form of power analysis in a powercentered practice as IR, to be a power phenomenon as such. By constructing a particular
story where the focus is either on the low fungibility or the translation efficacy of US
power (as a way to overcome the “paradox of unrealised power” after Vietnam), it
“authorises” the Realists’ research agenda on major powers. The focus on miscalculations
and conspiracies which is the logical outgrowth of Neorealist power analysis, seems,
however, rather limited compared with the forgoing discussion of the adaptation crisis of
established practices.
In a second step, an example of an analysis of the Second Gulf War will show how
interpretation is framed by the application of dichotomies that references to Realism
implicitly evoke, as for instance, the Realist-Idealist divide, the isolationist-interventionist
divide, the Neorealist structuralist-reductionist divide, and the just-war debate.
304
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1. The silent construction of puzzles: overrationalised power translations
The translation dynamics of Neorealist power analysis contrasts an ideal outcome,
constructed by the distribution of capabilities and their aggregation, with the actual case.
In instances of a total match, we would have the ideal-type of a systemic balance-ofpower explanation: the distribution of capabilties corresponds to the distribution of actual
power and explains the outcome. Foreign policy analysis is redundant in such a case
because the actors can be assumed to have made the situational optimal calculation of
their means and ends, their ”National Interest”, and their rational behaviour aggregates to
a collective action which is determined by the balance of power among them. In all other
cases, which are certainly most, if not all, real cases, the distribution of capabilities does
not explain the outcome. Consequently, many scholars, such as for instance Baldwin or
Keohane and Nye, extended the concept and analysis of power to investigate the conversion of capabilities into influence over outcomes. Here, foreign policy analysis and
regimes are crucial to seeing how the distribution of power was translated into the
assessment of national securities and interests, channelled via regimes and finally, how
skillful the capabilities were applied.
The comparison of the foreign policy account with the “rational” story provides the
argumentative structure. If “irrational” behaviour is shown in the account of the case, then
the analysis will try to put it in order. As we have seen in the argument on burden-sharing
and coalition management in the Gulf Conflict, suboptimal outcomes can be explained to
be the result of collective action problems. On the unit-level, unexpected behaviour can
be for instance erratic or contradictory policy moves or the negligence of capabilities that
would have made a difference. These differences between the ideal and actual case
produce the “puzzles of the account”.
Yet, the power-dynamic approach might overrationalise what actually happened. This
is an inbuilt tendency of the entire perspective with its concentration on initial capabilities,
their translation into interests and strategies, and into outcomes. Overrationalisations can
exist at all levels. First, in the awareness of capabilities (miscalculations); then whether
they are used efficiently or not (irrational behaviour); finally, in their impact on the
outcome (regime bias). The analysis is pushed toward ex-post rationalisations or overrationalisations. Power-centered explanations will never get out of the Neorealist dilemma:
either, as shown by this account, to run the risk of attributing too much purpose and
“master-plans” to fortuitous actions, or to disregard power effects that cannot be linked
to intentional policies. But most importantly, all these can change during and because of
the conflict. The biggest overrationalisation is the one attaching constant capabilities,
constant interests and strategies and the concentration on one specific outcome.
This section will extensively analyse the major power-puzzles because, as might be
expected, they have also been at the center stage of the analysis of the war. With the hindsight of the very clear outome of the conflict, the inability of the US to deter the invasion
in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein’s persistence in going to war and the US reluctance to go to
Baghdad have spurred most debate.
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1.1. US diplomacy — an invitation or a trap for Iraq?
The Middle East is riddled with conspiracy theories. But far from being alien to the
American officials’ mind, as one US commentator likes to stress1, they are very much
alife in the scripts which the war mobilized. They are also consistently reproduced in
Western popular culture through spy novels and films which in turn affect the way reality
is screened.2 It is therefore not fortuitous that commentators saw this parallel in the postwar analyses: “Aux deux dimensions déjà connues du drame, celle d’un racket financier
raté suivi d’une croisade musclée réussie s’ajoutait une dimension non moins négatrice du
politique, celle d’un (mauvais) roman d’espionnage.”3
But conspiracy theories are also the logical outcome of attempts to persistently
rationalize the inexplicable. The diplomatic failure of the US to deter the Iraqi invasion
has been often looked upon with suspicion. On the one hand, the US was militarily
preparing an answer to a possible Iraqi attack on the Arab peninsula (see chapter 9.3.). On
the other hand, the US have been diplomatically accomodating the Iraqi government for
years, possibly inducing Saddam Hussein’s regime to believe “that it should become the
strategic partner of the USA in the Middle East after the end of the conflict with Iran,
provided the USA removed its forces from the Gulf region.”4 To make sense of both in
power terms, either the US inefficiently used its diplomatic capabilities and was
constrained to go to war or it was efficiently preparing a specific war-environment to use
its capabilities in the best possible conditions. Since (1) the utilitarian power approach is
characterised by a focus on how actors use, implement and realise their policy instruments
within or between specific regimes, and since (2) foreign policies make up for
inconsistencies between the structural origins and the outcome, the whole story tends to
see the main actors as prime movers and masterminds.5 An analysis of governance would
look at the way such a disposition is mobilised unwittingly; it would look at the way
conspiracy theories, and those who handle them, are legitimated.
US signalling “green light” to Iraq
The history of the failed US diplomacy starts with the end of the First Gulf war. On 9
August 1988, one day after the Iran-Iraq cease-fire, Kuwait decided to increase oil
production, in violation of OPEC accords. On top of this, it pumped oil from the disputed
Rumalia field. Iraq calculated that the cut in oil prices would cost Iraq roughly as much
1
Daniel Pipes, “Dealing with Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories”, Orbis. A Journal of World Affairs,
vol. 36, no. 1 (Winter 1992), p. 42.
2
This is a point stressed by James Der Derian, “The Intertextual Power of International Intrigue”, in his
Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 40-70.
3
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Kuwait”, p. 11.
4
Goerge Joffe, “Middle Eastern views of the Gulf conflict”, p. 182.
5
As such they can be used as tools for a more efficient foreign policy, a form of indirect power which
consciously mobilizes this disposition, because “[w]orrying about foreign intrigue unwittingly imbues the
foreigner with power. See ”Daniel Pipes, “Dealing with Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories”, p. 52.
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as its debt-service to Kuwait.6 From this point onwards, tensions between Kuwait and Iraq
were mounting, of which the US government was aware.
Yet the US government tried to uphold its accomodatory policy toward Iraq, “aid to
moderate”, until the end. It was initiated on 7 March 1980, when the UN Commission of
Human Rights, in which the USA is influential, did not take action on a proposal to
enquire into Human Rights abuses in Iraq.7 On 26 February 1982, it took Iraq off the list
of terrorist nations. Countries on this list are prohibited from receiving governmentfinanced export credits and are subject to restrictive controls on arms sales and technology
exports. Within months the Iraq received over $US 400 million in Commodity Credit
Corporation (CCC) to finance US agricultural exports. By November 1984, full diplomatic
relations were restored.8 Since the beginning of 1982, the Pentagon three times invited
Iraq to swap US arms for Soviet tanks and helicopters. With the CCC, Iraq became the
US’s third largest trading partner in the Middle East - after Israel and Saudi Arabia —
(buying $US 4.4 billions worth of goods in the first quarter of 1990), the single largest
overseas consumer of US rice (the USA has sold as much as 20 per cent of its annual
crop to Iraq) and one of the largest importers of US corn, wheat, and other grains. The
Iraqis were on the receiving end of what the columnist James Ridgeway called “a marketdriven quest to relieve the Republican heartland” of Midwestern farmers to weather a
depression that pushed down the price of farm commodities throughout the 1980s.9
Between 1985 and 1990, Iraq received over $US 4 billion in US-guaranteed agricultural
exports.10 These credit lines and the opposition to sanctions were due to the lobbying of
the Washington-based US-Iraq Business Forum that also organised trips for US businessmen including a private audience with Saddam Hussein. The scandal of the BNL showed
not only $3 billion of unauthorised loans to Iraq, but also irregularities of the CCC-insured
dealings handled by the BNL (bribes refunneled to pay hidden arms deals). The secret
funding must have been known to US authorities11 (see Table 14.1 for other US “carrots”
for Iraq). Thus, in an attempt to continue diplomatically “business-as-usual”, US Assistant
Secretary of State for Near East Affairs John Kelly visited Saddam Hussein in Baghdad
on 12 February 1990. He assured him that the US wanted to improve relations with Iraq.
Notwithstanding this, many events darkened US-Iraqi relations. Western governments
were increasingly concerned about Iraqi domestic policies. Bazoft, an Iranian-born
journalist working for The Observer, was arrested in September 1989 while probing into
a mysterious explosion at a secret military complex near Baghdad. In March 1990 he was
6
For this point and for an excellent account of the diplomatic failings before and during the Gulf conflict,
see John K. Cooley, “Pre-war Gulf diplomacy”, Survival, vol. XXXIII, no. 2 (March-April 1991), p. 126.
7
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, p. 3.
8
Bruce W. Jentleson, “‘The Enemy of my Enemy … may still be may Enemy, too’”, pp. 11-14.
9
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, pp. 6-7.
10
This is just another indication of the political economy research programme on governance where
domestic social contracts are stabilised abroad.
11
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, p. 9.
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Part V. An analysis of governance through the Second Gulf War
Table 14.1 US “carrots” for Iraq
1. Military or dual use technology
exports:
- between 1985 and 1990, export licenses
were granted for 771 sales of technology
($US 1.5 billion)
- in July 1990, export licenses were
approved for computers to the Iraqi
Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization ($US 3.5 billion); flight simulators and associated technology ($US 1
million); forges and computer equipment
usable for the manufacture of 16-inch
gun barrels.
- encouragement or tacit consent to other
countries (France) or arms broker supplying weapons to Iraq
- channeling of US weapons via other
states (Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait)
2. CCC credit guarantees:
- $US 5 billion between 1982 and 1990.
3. Export-Import Bank guarantees:
- $US 300 million
4. Protection from US sanction bills:
- economic sanctions approved unanimously by the US Senate in the prevention of Genocide Act of 1988 were
opposed by the Reagan administration
and never passed.
- repeated attempts to impose agricultural
sanctions on Iraq were continually
opposed by the Reagan and Bush administration, by House Majority Leader
Richard Gephardt, House Minority
Leader Robert Michel, Senate Minority
Leader Robert Dole and House Armed
Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin
- on 12 April Senator Robert Dole led a
Senatorial delegation to Baghdad which
criticised Saddam Hussein, but quite
relieved not to impose any sanction that
would hurt US agricultural states
Source: Bruce W. Jentleson, “ The Enemy of my Enemy … may Still be my Enemy, too’”,
pp. 21, 24, 28, 30, 32.)
put on trial on charges of espionage and executed shortly afterwards. Human Rights infringements by the Iraqi government were also repeatedly condemned by the US State
Department’s annual reports on Human Rights since 1988. On 21 February 1990, the
annual report included 12 pages criticising Iraq in particular for its treatment of Kurds.12
Iraq, on the other hand, was alerted by several actions, including the US-UK “sting”
operation in 1990, in which 40 US-made capacitors, called krytons (triggering devices)
were seized. On 22 March 1990, a Canadian engineer, Gerald Bull, was murdered in
Brussels. He was supposed to help Iraq construct a so-called “super-gun”, of which
components were seized in several European harbours in April.13 In several speeches,
Saddam Hussein issued threats to the West: on 24 February during the Arab Co-operation
Council meeting in Amman, where he complained about the US presence in the Gulf; on
2 April in a speech to the Iraqi forces, where he threatened to ”burn half of Israel” with
12
John K. Cooley, “Pre-war Gulf diplomacy”, p. 126.
In an internationally concerted action, parts were seized in Teesport, Athens, Istanbul, London, and
Naples. In Geoffrey Kemp, “The Gulf Crisis: diplomacy or force?”, Survival, vol. XXXII, no. 6 (NovemberDecember 1990), p. 515, the author believes that the gun was to be 131 feet long with a range of
approximately 1600 km and that it might also be used to send a satellite into orbit.
13
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chemical weapons, if it was to attack Iraq, and on 30 May during an extraordinary Arab
summit. After having applied pressure in the Arab world against Kuwait, Iraq and Iran
eventually succeeded (with Saudi help) in making OPEC conform to their wishes on
quotas and prices. The price increase to $US 25/barrell was decided at a preliminary
meeting in Jidda on 10 July to be endorsed at the official meeting in Geneva on 24 July.
Yet, Kuwait, by announcing the arrangement two days later, added a stipulation in which
it reserved to itself the option to review and possibly reverse the decision by fall 1990.
In his conversation with Ambassador Glaspie, Saddam Hussein confirmed this when he
said that “we received some intelligence that they were talking of sticking to the
agreement for two months only.”14 This public announcement made the whole OPEC
decision meaningless, because it, in effect, told major buyers to wait until October.15
After this humiliation, Iraq seems to have decided on a military confrontation. On 16
July, in a long memorandum to the President of the Arab League, Tareq Aziz complained
officially about Kuwaiti behaviour and issued threats which were confirmed the next day
in Saddam Hussein’s address to the nation. In this way, the Iraq-Kuwaiti conflict became
public: “He had committed himself in such a way that any compromise on his part would
have been seen as a humiliating capitulation.”16
In this context, some US diplomatic moves of the last two weeks had furthered doubts
about US intentions. They were made in perfect knowledge that Iraq had already massed
100.000 troops at the Kuwaiti border. It starts with a declaration of the State Department’s
spokeswoman for the Middle East, Mrs Margaret Tutwiller, on 24 July. She declared that,
on the one hand, the US had no defence agreement with Kuwait but that, on the other
hand, it would support friends in the region with whom it had long-standing ties — which
implied Kuwait. Saddam Hussein, apparently insecure how to interpret the US position,
summoned the US Ambassador to Iraq. April Glaspie confirmed the official line that the
US had no position on the border dispute. On the same 25 July, the Washington Post,
considered a quasi-official organ by the Iraqi authorities, quoted a senior official saying
that the US would not go to war if Iraq occupied a small amount of Kuwaiti territory.17
It is quite difficult to conceive that the US did not realise that these declarations were both
inviting Iraq’s invasion and not giving any incentive to the Kuwaitis to compromise. On
28 July, in response to Ambassador Glaspie’s report, President Bush cabled to Saddam
Hussein that the US had no opinion on inner-Arab border disputes. Iraq did certainly not
miss the testimony by Assistant Secretary John Kelly before the Middle East subcommittee of the House on 31 July. Again, he insisted that the US had no defence treaty with
Gulf states. The BBC World Service brought the news immediately. The Financial Times
14
“The Glaspie-Hussein Transcript”, in Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the Storm.
A Gulf Crisis Reader (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1991), p. 396.
15
This point has been repeated by Tareq Aziz in an interview given to the New Yorker on 24 June 1991.
See Johm Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, p. 50.
16
Efraim Karsh & Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait”, p. 25.
17
For this paragraph, see Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, p. 51, 53, 59.
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confirmed the next day. The US was not deterring a possible invasion (by 27 July it was
considered “likely” by the CIA). Therefore, the most rational interpretation is that the US
expected and could accept a “limited” invasion.
Unless one espouses the conspiracy theory that the United States wanted Iraq to invade
Kuwait as an excuse to crush Saddam Hussein, then surely the simplest explanation is
that the Bush administration was trying to shove Kuwait into a more tractable posture
with regard to the price of oil and possibly to the leasing of the two islands so desired
by Iraq for the construction of a deep harbour in the Gulf. Iraq, after all, was a US ally
and already a serious trading partner. Nor would the Administration, strongly oriented
to the oil lobby, have been at all averse to seeing a hike in prices, which had drifted in
real terms below their 1973 level … In fact by 25 July the CIA had decided that
Saddam Hussein wasn’t bluffing, predicting that he would confine himself to seizing
disputed territory on the Kuwaiti border.18
The same appears from the congressional testimony of Ambassador Glaspie in September
1990, where she admits to not having believed that Saddam Hussein would take all of
Kuwait. The reporting New York Times emphasised the “all”.19 As long as the archives
are not open, the interpretation will remain speculative. A rational actor approach would
suppose that if the US agreed to such a course of action, its most likely outcome, namely
a new border and money settlement, would stabilise the region in terms judged favorable
to the US. Yet this most rational ex post account which attributes a coherence to the
different acts is not very rational in an a priori means-ends calculus: the result of limited
change could very probably have been obtained by direct pressure on Kuwait, or by
shouldering Egypt’s and Saudi Arabia’s efforts to provide an Arab solution.
Conspiracy against Iraq ?
The fact that there was a strong resistance against any Arab diplomacy (at least after the
second day of the conflict) and that there are sources which would indicate US and British
encouragement of Kuwaiti intransigence, evoke, however, the suspicion of a trap. It is one
thing to leave the regional security complex some space to manoeuvre indicating a US
benevolence to a partial rearrangement of the border dispute between Kuwait and Iraq. It
is another story if Kuwaiti intransigence has been provoked by its Western allies. This
would imply that the US and the UK wanted an armed solution to the conflict. Several
sources suggest exactly this.20 During a meeting between Jassir Arafat and the Kuwaiti
Crown Prince in July 1990, which also dealt with the border/debt question between
Kuwait and Iraq, the Prince is said to have received a phone call from Margaret Thatcher
urging him to stand firm assuring him of unconditional support from the UK and the US.
With regard to the last minute meeting in Jeddah on 31 July, another report notes that the
18
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, p. 17.
Claude Julien, “Fauteurs de guerre?”, Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 37, no. 439 (October 1990), p. 17.
20
For the following, see David Campbell, Politics without Principle, pp. 46-47.
19
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Emir instructed his negotiatiors to maintain an unwavering position which was said to
conform with the opinion of Egypt, the US and the UK. Finally, the Iraq government, in
an attempt to delegitimate the Kuwaiti government, released a secret document they had
found after the invasion in the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The document indicated the common US-Kuwaiti attempt to use Iraqi economic weaknesses for political concessions. It is supposed to be a protocol which the Kuwaiti director-general of state
security had formulated after his meeting with the CIA Director William Webster on 14
November 1989. The CIA confirmed that there had been a meeting in November 1989 but
declared the document a forgery. Its denial did, however, not say that such a discussion
had never taken place, but only that there was no discussion at this particular meeting.
But why should the UK and the US try to provoke a war? There are at least two
plausible explanations, one on the domestic and the other on the regional security level.
The first is linked to the beneficial effects of recession wars, if won, on domestic public
support and economic growth.21 There have been, so the argument runs, several US
recession-war cycles: the post-war recession and the Korean War, the 69-70 recession and
the US escalation in Vietnam (Cambodia), the 1979 recession and Carter’s start of the
Second Cold War, and the 1981-82 recession and Reagan’s military Keynesianism. The
recession at the beginning of the 90s was severe: Germany’s unification bubble started to
burst, in Japan growth rates had declined, and importantly the Japanese stock market
declined by 40% in 1990, which made Japanese investors repatriate their money so as to
balance losses at home - at a time when the US most needed Japanese capital. President
Bush was at a low because he could not keep his electoral promises. A rallying war and
its successful conduct would be a welcome chance to boost national support. In the
recession-ridden UK, the situation was hardly any better. The unpopular Tory government
might not only have thought to repeat the Falkland experience, but the City of London
depended on the sustained financial support by the Gulf investors.”22 Although not
necessarily a long-term plan to go to war, in the last weeks before the conflict the UK and
the US administrations took the chance to redeem their declining image.
The second explanation is an analogy to the Yom Kippur/October war in 1973. As
already mentioned, there have been hypotheses that the US wanted Egypt to invade, to
manage a war in which Israel would for the first time not win, but due to US help, not
lose either, in order to be able to forge new solutions when the iron was still hot. In this
reading, Baker’s Middle East initiatives, the Madrid Conference (and also the Washington
Accords) are the logical outcome of a master strategy to stabilise the regional security
complex (see chapter 10). On both occasions, the US could use its role as the main defender of Israel in order to extract some concessions. On top of this and completely unexpectedly, the PLO left the conflict so weakened internationally, that diplomatic successes became crucial for Arafat’s and El Fatah’s leadership within the Palestinian camp.
21
22
André Gunder Frank, “Third World War: A political economy of the Gulf War...”, p. 269.
André Gunder Frank, “Third World War: A political economy of the Gulf War...”, p. 276.
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But both these explanations, the latter a bit less than the former, contradict the other
story in which a partial invasion would certainly not have been met with full-fledged war
by the allied forces. Nevertheless, the important governance point to note here is that the
initial power-puzzle, why the superior power of the US did not deter Iraq, prompted a
series of research questions which are considered the center of the debate - which is just
another indicator how power analysis and politics have become naturalised in IR. The
expertise that researchers acquire, is to distinguish the more or less probable rationalisations that often, not only for the lacking archive material or psychoanalysis of the
decision makers, are grounded on the “reasonability” of their arguments, which, in turn,
are conventionally judged by the practice of academic observers. The paradigm prefers or
empowers particular ways of answering puzzles, which does not preclude, as we have just
seen, a critical position with regard to the “powerful” in IR.
The Korea script — or who trapped whom into Kuwait?
One of the ways to appear more authoritative is through recourse to historical analogies,
especially if this mobilises the lessons of the past in the collective memory of the practice.
This means that one can go on spinning stories of ex-post rationalisations and conspiracies. After all, it was not President Bush, but the government of Kuwait which set off
the conflict dynamic. Here the observer’s understanding of the conflict became overlaid
with another script, the Korean war.
The first parallel is with the historic speech by Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who
defined the Korean peninsula as not of “vital interest” to the US.23 Post-war historiography considered this one of the triggers of the Korean war because it could be read as
an official declaration that the US would not intervene. There was no deterrence, because
the superior means were not to be used. Or, turned ironically, the miscalculation stems
from the fact that “peace-loving peoples frequently fail to make clear their determination
to resist aggression and to impress potential aggressors with the consequences they must
expect should they once take the path of violence.”24
Another analogy concerns Kuwait’s and South Korea’s behaviour before and during
the crisis. Tired of the Iraqi government’s permanent claims, the Kuwaiti rulers might
have decided to use the US to get rid of the Iraqi threat: the Kuwait government’s
intransigence acted as the catalyst for a US intervention. This theme replays again a
feature of the Korean war, where during the first offensive of North Korean troops,
commentators believed that South Korea showed an insufficient defence capacity on
purpose to prompt US intervention. Again the same idea that so-called powerless states
have an interest in escalation if they would find an outside power whose interests would
be harmed by passivity on higher stakes in the escalation ladder.
23
24
Claude Julien, “Fauteurs de guerre?”, p. 17.
Robert C. Tucker and David Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 44.
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This argument has been provoked by several events. As already mentioned with
regard of the OPEC agreement in July 1990, on several crucial moments, Kuwait did not
show any willingness to compromise. In a last-minute meeting on 31 July and 1 August
in Jeddah, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia tried to broker a settlement of the Iraq-Kuwait
disputes. Since the Emir of Kuwait was not part of the Kuwaiti delegation, an evident
snubbing of the whole matter, Saddam Hussein did not attend either. Iraq asked Kuwait
for a $US 10 billion gift or loan. Kuwait offered $US 9 billion, and King Fahd the
remaining billion. When Fahd and Hussein had retired, the Kuwaiti Crown Prince Saad
wanted to link the loan to a settlement of the border dispute. Iraqi representatives refused
and threatened to get the money by other means.
“Don’t make threats”, answered Saad. “Kuwait has powerful friends. We have allies too.
You will be forced to pay the money you owe us.” Those were the final words spoken
face to face. Next day, delegates left without an agreed communique.25
For all those that do not believe in this kind of conspiracy theory, this might sound farfetched. It is, however, the logical consequence of power-centered explanations that accept
the perspective of the policy makers. If power is to explain the outcome, once the
outcome is known, the whole story is reconstructed to allow for the translation of the
distribution of power via actor’s behaviour into the outcome. This produces explanations
which attach a lot of knowledge and control to actors. This is the Machiavellian core of
power-centered intentionalist explanations, taking the word in its received usage. The
extrication and weighing of these “intriguing” rationalisations is one of the most positively
sanctioned puzzle-solving in IR/IPE.
1.2. Miscalculations, nightmare scenarios and Neorealist ex-post explanations
Whereas the foregoing section dealt with power-puzzles as explanations of miscalculation
before the outset of the conflict, once the conflict starts, power analysis will focus on the
irrational use of the power resources at hand. Yet, since the conflict had two beginnings,
namely the invasion of Kuwait and then the “liberation of Kuwait” which were separated
by diplomatic manoeuvres designed to avoid the war, there were again possibilities for
resource miscalculations. Indeed, the US (apparently?) enormously overestimated the Iraqi
forces. But there were also real translation-puzzles in the Neorealist power analysis when
Iraq did not succeed in making the “nightmare scenario” come true, i.e. leaving Kuwait
with all its forces intact, and when the US stopped short of dethroning Saddam Hussein.
The invisible army
It was with incredulity that commentators looked at the Iraqi military disasters. Was this
the heroic army we were told of some months ago? The 4th or 5th biggest in the world?
25
John K. Cooley, “Pre-war Gulf diplomacy”, p. 128.
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Either Iraq was not as powerful as initially thought, or just incompetent or both. The
initial puzzle is, then, to assess the initial power resources.
The easiest exercise consists in showing that the initial calculation has overestimated
the actual Iraqi force. Such a reassessment already plasters over some of the most visible
discrepancies between the expectations of the initial balance of power and the actual outcome. Iraq was supposed to have an army of 955.000 men, the world fourth largest. At
the beginning of the war, the Pentagon estimated that 545.000 troops were in or near
Kuwait. This calculation was based on the number of division sent. Yet, it turned out that
they were undermanned. Reports of Iraqi prisoners gave the impression that around
350.000 were in the Kuwaiti “theatre”26, of which around 100.000 seem to have deserted,
leaving the total number around 250.00027 or even only 183.000.28
Often, this recalculation is mixed with a critique of US overkill in the conflict or
suspicions of hidden Pentagon (or other) interests. “[The US] did so deliberately, to help
justify the carpet and terror bombing of both the military and civilian ‘assets’ of this Third
World country of a population of only 17 million souls.”29 As in all conspiracies, this
might be true, but not necessarily so. First, Iraqi propaganda did everything to amplify its
supposed military might, also because it was playing on the Vietnam Syndrome, and the
negative experiences in the Middle East, not the least in the disastrous Reagan intervention
in Lebanon. Then, since there is no measure of power, power miscalculations should be
expected for at least three reasons. Cold War years should have accustomed us to “worstcase” thinking which implies systematic overestimations of the “enemy’s” side.30 On top
of it, security threats need to be dramatic, so common wisdom has it, to stimulate a
response from public opinion. Finally, the arms bazaar and the military-industrial complex
sometimes help to “awaken” the needs they propose to satisfy. Power calculations are
systematically biased, although the extent of mismatch for the Gulf conflict was unusual.
Tareq Aziz’ nightmare
… no negotiations, no compromises, no attempts at face saving
and no rewards for aggression.
President Bush, “An Extra Mile for Peace”, 3 January 1991
The worst case for rationality seems, however, Iraq. Once all these diplomatic attempts
by the French and Soviet had opened a degree of manoeuvre, the Iraqi government appeared all the more incompetent to translate its resources into influence over outcomes.
26
Lawrence Friedman and Efraim Karsh, “How Kuwait Was Won”, p. 13.
Eugene J. Carroll Jr and Gene R. La Rocque, “Victory in the Desert”, p. 45.
28
David Campbell, Politics Without Principle, p. 62 referring to a report by Washington Post, 24 April
1992, p. A25.
29
Andre Gunder Frank, “Third World War: A political economy of the Gulf War...”, p. 272.
30
For a typical treatment of such Cold-War overestimations, see Andreas von Bülow, Die eingebildete
Unterlegenheit. Das Kräfteverhältnis West-Ost, wie es wirklich ist (“The immaginary inferiority. East-West
balance of power how it really is”) (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1985).
27
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Here, relational power analysis shifts to looking instead for conversion mistakes. A
first version on this miscalculation-theme is the question of why Saddam Hussein did not
wait another 18 months before invading Kuwait so as to acquire nuclear capability. Nota
bene: the question is probably alien to policy makers and analysts in the field. Saddam
Hussein had chemical weapons and did not use them in this war. It is quite doubtful that
he would use them for more than balance of threat with Israel, and even more that he
would make his military moves dependent on them, not more than Israel, for instance.
Yet, reasonable actions are not the most rational ones for the translation of capabilities
into actual influence. In good geostrategic manner, future power capabilities should also
be expected to be rationally applied. Therefore, the question becomes sensible. The rationalisation provided is a replay of the origins of the conflict, namely the political and
financial situation of Iraq but, most prominently, the Iraqi expectation that neither Saudi
Arabia, nor the US would react and that, therefore, waiting was unnecessary.31
Yet, the leading theme has become another one: why did Iraq not make the “nightmare scenario” true? By leaving Kuwait after having faced the biggest military coalition
since World War II, Saddam Hussein could have kept his formidable military might intact
with all its ABC potential. One possibility is that Saddam Hussein was aware of Iraqi
inferiority, but believed the war would not happen.32 This would explain his scant respect
for the diplomatic efforts to go “an extra mile for peace”, including the humiliating
treatment of the Secretary General of the UN Perez de Cuellar who had to wait several
hours before Saddam Hussein received him. At the same time, however, there had been
extensive backchannel diplomacy and an increasing awareness of a possible war. Again,
the difficulty lies not in assessing whethr Saddam Hussein believed in war, but whether
or not he changed his ideas before the outbreak of the war.
Therefore, the diplomatic and policy moves have to be scrutinized, in order to derive
the options that the Iraqi government thought itself facing at different points of the
crisis/war. After the “invitation” to Kuwait and the massive deployment, Iraq seemed to
have followed a typical double-track policy: on the one hand preparing a defensive
military posture for possible attacks and on the other hand preparing the ground for a
diplomatic solution within which it would keep a part of Kuwait. The military defensive
posture consisted in two things. First, Iraq tried to secure Iranian neutrality. The price was
a treaty accepting the “Talweg” solution in the Schatt-el-Arab, i.e. the reacceptance of the
status quo ante of 1981. This dissolved the Eastern front. All the troups could move West,
or, as it turned out later, to the core of Iraq to defend the government. This move can
either be interpreted as an aggressive troop concentration against the allied forces, or just
a defensive action to avoid Iran’s taking advantage of the conflict. Second, Iraq relied on
31
Martin Indyk, “Watershed in the Middle East”, pp. 70-71.
See also Fred Halliday, “The Gulf War 1990-1991…”, p. 116. This interpretation is fostered by the
reports that Evgeni Primakov, the special Soviet emissaire in the Gulf, made after the end of the conflict. For
the French discussion of his artciles published in the Pravda (and later in a book), see Francis Cornu &
Michel Tatu, “Les occasions manquées de M. Saddam Hussein”, Le Monde, 15 March 1991.
32
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a defence line in Kuwait built in analogy to the First Gulf war. The aim was to inflict
high costs to an attacking force, so that it would give up; in short, a war of attrition. Yet,
this purely defensive position undermined the dynamic of making military gains and
concentrated the army in a small piece of land where it could be easily surrounded.
The backchannel diplomacy had initially placed one condition, the remowal of the ElSabah family from Kuwaiti government. Later, Iraq tried to use the French ldea of a link
with the Arab-Israeli conflict or of an international Middle East conference. Then, Iraq
attempted to show up double standards in the treatment of Israel and of Arab states. This
was helped by the incident 8 October 1990, when 19 Palestinians were killed at the Mosq
in Jerusalem. Diplomatic offensives to split the coalition through direct appeals to Arab
societies were, however, without success. Even when the air attack had started, military
means, the Scuds, were used to fragment the coalition by provoking Israel.
Did Iraq want war? Those commentators stressing Iranian neutrality link it with an
attempt at joint hegemony in the Gulf, thereby winning Iran on its side. In his declaration
on 15 August, Saddam Hussein offered to turn the Gulf into a “Sea of Peace”. Those who
stress the freeing of supplementary troops, see Iraq preparing a war.33 The last version
seems less convincing in the light of the fact that Iraq did not attack the coalition forces
when, during their initial deployment, they were weakest, and did release the hostages on
6 December who were the best guarantee for Western caution in conducting air raids.34
This release has been linked to the diplomatic offensive, the “extra mile for peace”, so as
to allow the US-proposed meeting in Baghdad between James Baker and Saddam Hussein.
Iraq accepted and released the hostages, yet the US cancelled the meeting.35
The treaty with Iran had unwillingly diminished Iraq’s options for a negotiated peace.
Having given up the already limited gains of a terrible war, Saddam Hussein had to cash
in something in exchange. Before leaving Kuwait, Saddam Hussein needed to be assured
of at least some minimum gain. US diplomacy had been geared since the middle of
August toward an unconditional retreat without any assured linkage to future negotiations.
Edgar Pisani, behind-the-scenes emissaire of Mitterrand, expressed the dilemma of the
diplomatic solution: Iraq was honestly ready to leave Kuwait — but for something in
return. The US wanted Iraq to leave first and then to negotiate. “But negotiate what? No
one ever told him.”36 The more the US could sell this diplomacy as legitimate, the less
options were left for Iraq. From the middle of August, the two major opponents would
have been hard pressed to find a negotiated solution: it meant either humiliation or war.
33
U.S.News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, p. 124.
Lawrence Freedman & Efraim Karsh, “How Kuwait was won”, p. 11. For one commentator, convinced
of the “Machiavellian” nature of Saddam Hussein, the analytically disturbing releasing of hostages is ex-post
rationalised (or tautologised) as “when the remaining hostages were finally released in December 1990, it was
evidently becuase their usefulness for Saddam has been exhausted.” Why this was “evident” is not discussed.
The interpretation of events is biased by the view of the villain which has to be uphold. See Robert Jackson,
“Dialectical Justice in the Gulf War”, Review of International Studies, vol. 18, no. 4 (October 1992), p. 344.
35
Alexander Cockburn & Andrew Cohen, “The Unnecessary War”, p. 20.
36
U.S. News and World Report, Triumph Without Victory, p. 192.
34
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Once the US had decided on a military intervention, at the latest by the end of
October, diplomacy consisted in making (1) diplomatic openings to appease the domestic
front and to get a multilateral blessing for military intervention and (2) to stay firm on
unconditional retreat from Kuwait. From the point, where the conflict objectives of the US
were expanding to include the destruction of Iraqi forces — much in concordance with
the World War II script — the avoidance of the “nightmare scenario” became primordial.
The only exception would be if Iraq accepted the control and supervision of its weapon
systems. The US had to uphold this dilemma of either humiliation or war, indeed, it had
to escalate humiliations in order to change the policy priorities of Saddam Hussein such
as to make war appear the lesser evil.37 One instrument repeatedly used was the ultimatum, first for the 15 January, and then when the Soviet diplomacy was making a negotiated withdrawal possible before the land war. Another humiliation was the handling of
the Baker-Hussein meeting in Baghdad, to which Iraq had agreed, but which was repeatedly delayed and then finally given up by the US. This diplomacy might explain why the
Iraqi ruling elite developed, in the words of Tareq Aziz after the war, “a fatalistic feeling
about war; we found ourselves in a position where we could not do anything about it.”38
Thus, (domestic) political humiliation or (international) military defeat was the
dilemma. It does not seem that Iraq wanted war but that it accepted it as the minor evil.
But even then Saddam Hussein’s choice for preferring defeat to humiliation is somewhat
irrational. If Hussein repeatedly stressed that the real war-objective of the West was the
destruction of Iraq’s military power, he should have avoided any conflict, since he could
not have been sure where it would stop. Either he thought he could win until the air
bombardements told him the opposite — or he did not take seriously the widely available
political discussion about the nightmare scenario: “comme si le chef de l’Etat était le
dernier à croire sa propre propagande.”39 It is here that traditional foreign policy analysis
will add the cognitive dimension pointing to the impact the dynamics of crisis have on the
decisional context and the individual capacity to choose rationally. “On avait l’impression
que l’auto-image de Saddam Hussein tout autant que l’image que ces médias se faisaient
de la crise se réfléchissaient mutuellement, se renforçaient l’une l’autre dans un mouvement en spirale presque autonome sans grand rapport avec les véritables données du
conflit.”40
Yet, this does not explain why Iraq did not try a partial withdrawal so as to preempt
war. It is, however, not clear that a partial withdrawal would have changed US plans, nor
that Iraq thought that it would change US plans.41 With the doubling of US troops in the
37
For a similar view, see Robert W. Tucker & David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, pp. 9091. This follows Pierre Hassner’s “golden rule” of foreign policy which is most successful not by trying to
force the other’s behaviour to change, but to make his/her priorities shift.
38
As quoted in Lawrence Freedman & Efraim Karsh, “How Kuwait was won”, p. 9, fn. 11.
39
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe: nuages après la tempête”, p. 456.
40
Ghassan Salamé, “Le Golfe, un an après l’invasion du Kuwait”, p. 10.
41
Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation, p. 94.
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Gulf, it was quite clear that Bush needed a positive result to justify the withdrawal of the
deployed forces. US diplomacy offered only one option: complete and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. All the UN resolutions were voted in this respect. The entire propaganda was that there should be no gain from aggression. Without the historical sources,
it is impossible to judge if Iraq did not, to the contrary, finally decide to push for war in
which it had more to win than to lose in terms of domestic legitimacy.
In this scenario, once trapped in the lose-lose situation, and thus in war, Iraq’s best
way out was to avoid political humiliation and to limit military defeat. This would explain
the later very limited Iraqi “casualties”. It points also to the supreme rationalisation: Bush
and Hussein fought a war, in which they would both win. Saddam Hussein faced the West
and survived against “the biggest coalition in modern times”, whereas George Bush
quickly and decisively won, not the war, but the Vietnam Syndrome.42
But this could only happen, if the US would not march to Baghdad and destroy the
Ba‘ath regime. Since Saddam Hussein’s behaviour is most rational if he could count on
US restraint, expectedly one can find interpretations about Saddam Hussein’s master tricks
that avoided any further US involvement. Hence
Perhaps their greatest mistake was in expecting the regime to fall after the defeat in
Kuwait. Here Saddam outfoxed them all, for prior to the war he led the Americans into
a trap which they closed on themselves. By brandishing chemical weapons, and then at
the Baker-Aziz meeting in Geneva extracting a threat by the United States to destroy
him if they were used, he lowered the risks of war enormously; he could be driven from
Kuwait or even, as he chose, withdraw most of his forces anyway, knowing the United
States and its allies would not pursue him.43
Yet, it is not clear why a threat to destroy Hussein if he used ABC weapons would automatically imply a reliable declaration that they would not do it if he refrained, as the same
author acknowledges by quoting that “intuition would suggest” the US tried to kill
Saddam Hussein with attacks on shelters. Nor does it explain why Bush decided not to
crush those Iraqi troops that opposed the allied forces (see next subsection).
In power terms, the Iraqi power translation mistake would be explained through the
constraints of domestic Iraqi legitimacy. One needs thus to reassess the initial power of
Iraq, this time not in the military, but in the political sector. The story looks like a poker
game, where the US move to violently react to a limited attack (Kuwait, not Saudi Arabia
being the aim) raised the bid. The Iraqi government, forced to escalate as well, had to
prepare for a diplomatic bargain backed by a military option that was not sustained by its
political power. Trying to use its military might as leverage for financial and political
security, the political insecurity boomeranged back on military power, both by disenabling
42
In a private conversation in January 1994, Ghassan Salamé said that this rationalisation has been used
among Middle East/IR scholars. In a slightly different form, Fred Halliday asks himself “how far, in the end,
Saddam really fought to defend Kuwait at all.” See “The Gulf War 1990-1991…”, p. 119.
43
Fred Halliday, “The Gulf War 1990-1991…”, p. 119.
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diplomatic options and eventually by provoking a war and military defeat. By raising the
stakes, the US changed the game.
Yet, all this can only be argued ex post. It does not derive from the systemic analysis,
the origins of the crisis. It cannot be derived from the power assessment at the beginning
of the conflict. Rational-choice approaches like Neorealism, that attach a central explanatory place to power must, therefore, disaggregate the conflict into a series of different
games with intermediate outcomes feeding into a general result. By doing this micro job,
one can also change the assessment at the macro-level, i.e. the power structure used to
analyse the origins of the conflict. Since there is no possibility of measuring these items,
Neorealist power analysis becomes, in its own terms, unfalsifiable.44
No way to Baghdad
The US administration’s decisions, namely to leave Hussein in power and even to stop the
fight while a substantial part of the Republican Guard remained intact, prompted several
criticisms. General Schwarzkopf is reported to have pushed for some days more in order
to crush the military backbone of the Iraqi regime — without going to Baghdad.
Prominent commentators, with the hindsight of later developments, later agreed with him
rather than Bush.45 For once, it was not the “one arm tied behind the back”, but a
deliberate decision by President Bush to stop further combat. So, it was not a lack of will
to translate potential into actual power. This means that there must have been a particular
reason to stop fighting.
Besides the above mentioned Iraqi masterplan that trapped the US into a limited
conflict, two rationalisations are generally offered. First, further military action would have
stretched the UN cover too much: there was a risk that the international coalition, in particular the USSR and China, would leave the US alone and undercut the legitimacy of the
whole enterprise. In power terms, that would mean that the actual power should not be
assessed with sole reference to the military theater, despite the diplomatic success in being
given carte blanche for military intervention. In the regime of foreign intervention, there
are still some rules to be followed, in particular if one, as the US, claimed to install a
44
This means that at this point security studies and Neorealist power analysis go apart. A security-focused
approach will try to integrate the political vulnerability by showing at the micro-level, how it influenced the
Iraqi government’s security perception, thus its behaviour and the final outcome of the conflict. The explanatory thrust of rational choice can be kept, but security perception becomes decoupled from power relationally
conceived. It is not relational power, i.e. the control of a relationally valued resource, that explains Iraqi
compliance. Neither the US, nor anyone else in the Neorealist account possessed the most important resource
for constraining the Iraqi government to submit, namely domestic political legitimacy. The account of legitimacy is part of a security analysis, but not part of the relational power analysis of the Gulf War, except insofar as the lacking domestic legitimacy could impinge the successful translation of existing power resources
into actual power.
45
“Les Etats du Golfe n’ont rien appris” (entretien avec M. François Heisbourg, [alors] directeur de
l’Institut International d’Études Stratégiques), Le Monde, 17 janvier 1992, p. 3.
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“new world order” based on multilateral rule. Thus, Bush’s decision is based on a wider
calculus of the potential power of the US, which then appears more limited.46
Although this seems a reasonable motive not to march to Baghdad, it is less so for
not crushing Republican Guards. Thus, Bush’s decision remains somewhat irrational,
except if we come back to power balancing as the Realist imperative. In this more cynical
reconstruction, Bush was aware of the possible power vacuum in Iraq and left Saddam
Hussein in his job. This had Soviet backing because it avoided a stronger Shi‘ite influence
on its Southern borders. Probably, the Turks were content to see the Kurds not becoming
completely independent, although one could also argue that a vacuum in Iraq might have
prompted a Turkish attack. The whole scenario would be in perfect harmony with former
US policies who could not do better than shift back and forth in their assistance between
Iraq and Iran to avoid any preponderance. Yet, this decision, although most reasonable in
power terms has been certainly the most difficult to sell to the public because it was
mobilized on the World War II script. It was just not possible to leave Hitler in power.
The genocide convention could have been used to protect the Kurds. Thus, the still
persisting dissonance with this decision does not derive from the power account, but from
the way it has been overlaid by the Second World War script.
But the decision might not have been easy for Bush, either, if just for a moment we
leave the power-account. Above it was argued that Bush certainly mobilised the World
War II script for and during Desert Shield and that it cannot be excluded that the feedback
with the US defence culture reaffirmed an understanding of the crisis which became
increasingly closer to this script. Now, it could well be that the massive air bombardement
had convinced him before the ground attack that the analogy was visibly awkward.
Another possible solution could lay in the fact that the Vietnam script finally overtook
World War II. Crushing Saddam Hussein, the US would head for a more permanent occupation as in post-war Europe. This raised concerns about a possible “quagmire” scenario
which the Vietnam script had “taught” at all means to avoid. As one official said
We decided early on if there was anything that could turn this into a Vietnam conflict
it was going into densly populated areas and getting twelfe soldiers a day killed by
snipers. The main reason was that if we went to overthrow him, how would we get out?
If we set up a puppet government, how would we disentangle?47
46
This does not mean that despite the official Kuwaiti declarations to see Saddam Hussein removed, the
Kuwaiti government was not at all encouraging it. Even one year after the conflict, with the civil war in Iraq
ended, a weakened Iraqi regime stigmatised in the West, but holding power domestically has been seen by
Kuwaiti officials as the best possible constellation for Kuwait. It would both guarantee the paying of
reparations, and turn the domestic Kuwaiti discontent away to a common enemy. The worst possible scenario,
but also the least likely, would have been a new pro-Western government which would have been integrated
into the regional political system, be allowed to export oil (and thus take back some Kuwaiti market shares)
and would have redirected the interest again toward the Gulf states, and in particular Kuwait. For such an
analysis, as informed by debates within the Kuwaiti government, see Wolfgang Köhler, “Wenn Saddam
Hussein stürzte”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 March 1992, p. 14.
47
Quoted in Elizabeth Drew, “Letter from Washington”, The New Yorker (7 May 1991), p. 97.
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European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
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In conclusion, then, one of the rationalisations shows how Neorealist power analysis shifts
back and forth between the micro and macro level. Unable to derive an explanation just
from the structural level because power distribution does not presage the range of
outcomes, it needs to move to the unit level, so as to show how power is translated into
outcomes. Pushed to rationalise translation failures on the unit level, it can shift back to
show that agents can anticipate balance-of-power equilibria and thus can show a selfinterested restraint in using the available resources. We are far from a “logic of power”
as a causal conceptualisation would have it. True, some Neorealists acknowledge that
these are only ex-post explanations. These ex-post rationalisations command, however, a
wider audience to the extent they structure the way the conflict will be read in the future,
and the important lessons that will be drawn. An analysis of governance turns to the
puzzle-solving activity of the academic, because it mobilises pre-existing interpretive
schemes and because their successful application reproduces particular ways of interpreting
the world and legitimates the “practitioners” who competently handle them.
2. The open construction of the opponent as ritualised legitimation
Is puzzle-solving, here exemplified by the particular power-analysis research programmes
an implicit form of governance, practices can also openly invoke major dichotomies to
“discipline” the way competent debates should be pursued. The deployment, often wellestablished and ritualised, of these dichotomies enframe the understanding and interpretation of events by offering the choice of two (and not more) options that are believed
to exhaust the possibilities. They silence, however, the devices through which the
dichotomy has to come to be believed as the objective word about the problem.
After some conceptual clarifications, one case will illustrate how this worked for the
analysis of the Second Gulf War. A caveat should already be entered here. The illustration
is taken from Tucker and Hendrickson’s book which is a lucid criticism of US’ action in
the war. That they also use some of these dichotomies illustrates how particular analytical
disposition “governs” our understanding, not to diminish the overall value of their work.
2.1. Realist “blackmails”
Poser, dans l’œuvre même, la distinction entre deux lectures, c’est
se mettre en mesure d’obtenir du lecteur conforme que, devant les
calembours les plus déconcertants ou les platitudes les plus criantes, il retourne contre lui-même les mises en garde magistrales, ne
comprenant pas trop, mais soupçonnant l’authenticité de sa compréhension et s’interdisant de juger un auteur qui s’est une fois
pour toutes instauré lui-même en juge de toute compréhension.
Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 199.
The starting point is the practice of the international community of statesmen (although
not all of them) whose shared system of meaning, Realism, is based on what Ashley calls
the “double move”: positing the ideal of a community as the one realised in the Western
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European University Institute
DOI: 10.2870/47026
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world, but deferring its realisation beyond domestic community. This move constitutes the
field of the statesman and defines their “diplomatic culture”. The competent subjects of
international political community are those statesmen who share both a commitment to the
Western rationalist tradition and its limitation to the national community. This defines a
particular space at the margins between the domestic and the international, where the
absence of government is called anarchy, but which de facto is not absent of rule. The
competent statesmen defend the national community, embodying the highest stage of political development against foreign threats. They also must guard the precarious international
rule from the anti-historical universalism present in domestic society’s rationalist
commitments: Morgenthau’s nightmare of “universalist nationalism” which has forgotten
the borders of its effectiveness.
At the same time, the double move silences the very existence of such a community
misrecognizing it as a state of nature, even if the latter is redefined as in the English
School.48 In other words, by repeatedly returning to the external/internal distinction, it
not only creates a space for the international politician, reproducing the margins of
domestic and international societies, but hides from view that such a transnational space
and community exists. The sphere of international politics is constituted and normalised,
and the prevailing subjectivity of modern statemanship is empowered. These dispositions
are taken as necessary repsonses to a “truth already given.”49
Together the two effects of the realist double move set up an irony of no small proportions. They constitute a community whose members will know their place only as an
absence of community. More than that, they constitute a field of self-consciously “power
political” practice that refuses to entertain the question of its own power. They constitute
a field of power politics that cannot and will not speak of its own dependence upon the
competing waging of an unending historical struggle to delimit the reach of rational
order, pry open its own practical space, and secure recognition for its own distinctive
mode of subjectivity.50
If we recall Bourdieu’s concepts, this would mean that the double move is part of the
underlying doxa of a field which is constituted by statesman whose competence can be
apprehended by their handling of its dipositions. On the basis of this doxa, the “visible”
48
The position of the English school is ambiguous in this regard. On the one hand, individual writers are
repeatedly castigating the “domestic analogy” (Bull) and/or the undisputable facts of anarchy which make
international relations so repetitive and non theorisable (Wight). The British approach has, therefore, been criticised by US Realists who (rightly) pointed out that repetitiveness is the pressuposition of a theory. See Hans
J. Morgenthau, “The Intellectual and Political Functions of Theory,” in Truth and Power. Essays of a Decade
1960-70 (London: Pall Mall Press, 1970), pp. 248-51. On the other hand, the concept and ths study of “international society” with its “diplomatic culture” (Bull) points exactly to such an international community of
diplomats, which, reformulated as a transnationally shared Western “discursive practice”, has attracted the
interest by poststructuralist writers. See in particular James Der Derian, On Diplomacy. A Genealogy of
Western Estrangement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
49
Richard K. Ashley, “The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space”, pp. 418-419.
50
Richard K. Ashley, “The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space”, p. 420.
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debate is between an orthodox and a heterodox view, which, at least within the functioning of a field do not question the doxa as such, and can therfore be seen as part of the
positive reproduction of the field or practice. This is particularly the case, if the orthodox
view not only defines common wisdom, or the most accepted theses, but also its
“legitimate” contender.
This is not always done by the explicit imposition from the side of the orthodoxy. In
the pre-established categories of the discipline, heterodoxy can constitute itself as a
legitimate group only by accepting the doxic ordering of the field. “Au travail moteur de
la critique hérétique répond le travail résistant de l’orthodoxie. Les dominés ont partie liée
avec le discours et la conscience, voire la science, puisqu’il ne peuvent se constituer en
groupe séparé, se mobiliser et mobiliser la force qu’ils détiennent à l’état potentiel qu’à
condition de mettre en question les catégories de perception de l’ordre social qui, étant le
produit de cet ordre, leur imposent la reconnaissance de cet ordre, donc la soumission.”51
In response to heterodox criticisms, the orthodoxy will try to refer ritually to the doxa.
The discourse will appear as the most “natural” and self-evident possible, most informed
by common wisdom, thereby trying to reinstall the innocence of the doxic position.52
For post-structuralists, this is exactly what happened to Realism and its many
contenders, most notably idealism. For them, the ritualised return to this dichotomy does
not, in fact, open up debate to acknowledging plurality of opinions, but offers a double
and exhaustive ch